The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

The headline was content in the book, suggesting that the book will never be popular and that the authors expect not to make any money from the book. Very interesting book, where it gives you a lesson in human history, one that wasn't taught to me in public school, and how life hasn't really changed much in 2000 years, where we still depend upon certain things. The authors explain the principals of life, which is protection from violence and plunder, and how to protect yourself, or determine if the price of protection is too great, and you should move. It compares ideologies such as our Liberal Welfare Democracy to Communism, and how politics come into play. It goes into the concepts of money and how it works. After your learn all this, it tries to predict the future and suggest how you should be aware of using this information to benefit yourself in the future. I saw this book as an extension to Cash Flow Quadrant, but it is not, for I think Robert Kiyosaki should of read this book first before writing Cash Flow Quadrant. At first this book was hard to read, but I got use to the writing style and can now jam through pages with ease. The density of information within the book is very high, small text that covers most of the pages. I'm only 1/2 way through the book, and can't wait to finish it, so I can read my next book. I wish I would have read this book 20 years ago, but I wasn't aware of it's existence. For me, I give this book a 5 star rating, because I can understand the information presented, and actually use it. But you need to be a certain type of person to appreciate this book, for it's not for everyone. This book is meant for one who thinks like a capitalist, someone who is self employed, but an employee would learn a great deal from this book as well, or even one of our politicians in Government. If your looking to take your brain to the next level, figure out why we pay taxes, and understand the concepts of inflation and why our nation state does what it does, then buy this book. Otherwise, pick another book.

Dn good book. Prophetic in my opinion. You don't get books like this these days.

This book is by far one of the best books I have ever read. Extremely insightful.

In a lot of ways this book was ahead of its time, coming in the early days of the dotcom bubble. As we enter another phase of internet hype, driven by AI, decentralized crypto tech, and other formerly sci-fi realities, one can see the predictions made within this book starting to take further shape in terms of the increasing power of the individual and a respective increasing level of authoritarian response by national governments, beneath all the headlines and partisan spectacle. Others have described this better than I can, so suffice it to say the book is compelling in its prescience over 25 years ago, and thus remains compelling in terms of what to expect in the coming years. I think some things are taking longer to change than the authors may have anticipated, largely because with the impact of new tech have come new ways to assert control via propaganda and such. But the trends are still there, and in fact the authors also predict the increased effort to sustain authority that we've seen. Definitely an interesting read regardless of one's political background, though those with an aversion to true liberalism and/or libertarianism may not be happy with the realities it forecasts. If this book is correct, the future is not authoritarian. And given how much they have gotten right, I tend to give the authors the benefit of the doubt. I can't give it 5 stars for one reason: the authors love to repeat themselves. It sometimes takes them 20 pages to express a concept they could have made just as clearly in 5. It could do with an editor and a second (and slimmer) edition.

This book has me gripped from page one. Wow. I'm very happy I bought this one.

Its great the overview of cycles as the authors see it - given that the book was written in the early 90s, impressive how generally their predictions have played out to date. It's not an easy read, quite packed, learned a lot and interested to see how the rest of the predictions play out

I loved the eloquent argument that Governments are formed as a consequence of violence. When the productivity of societies increase, there is a rise in violence. Organisations (like governments or the mafia) form in order to provide protection and civil order - taxation is actually protection-money. The historical references to the medieval era, were very revealing - especially, in terms of highlighting the dogma of the church, at the time. Comparisons to current times, helps explain similar dogma, continually propagated by the mainstream media and celebrities. Although this book was written in the late 1990s; much of the commentary on political corruption, identity politics, social welfare and the decline of industrial nations (economically and morally) rivals the current talking points today, in 2021. Finally, the message that society will be driven by economic and mega political conditions, rather than mainstream narratives; is encouraging to the critical thinker. The most hopeful message is that the Governments of the future will have less power to confiscate the wealth generated by the Information Age. The intangible nature of digital property; the security of cryptography and the global nature of the Information Age, will represent the new mega political conditions of society.

It feels a bit unfair to review a book of predictions thirty years after publication, given that the reviewer has the benefit of hindsight that the authors did not have. However, the benefit of hindsight allows one to see where the authors' predictions were successful or unsuccessful. The authors -- a member of the House Lords and newspaper editor, on the one hand, and a venture capitalist, on the other -- published this book of predictions in the late-1990s. Taking an approach akin to technological determinism, the authors argue that the type of technology in any given period either creates benefits of scale for the use of violence or creates defensive powers that prevent the mass use of violence. The Industrial Age, beginning around 1500 and really taking off around 1800, created benefits for the mass use of violence, leading to the rise of large nation-states. However, the Information Age that was beginning to emerge in the late-20th Century strengthened defensive abilities. Consequently, this should reduce the benefits of mass violence, resulting in the devolution of power and a return to a more medieval style of politics, with many overlapping polities of various types. The authors are not entirely clear on why they think the Information Age gives so much power to defense, although they emphasize encryption technology and the rise of individual terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. A number of the book's predictions have come true over the past few decades. For example, the authors predict the rise of encryption-based "cybercurrency" (i.e., cryptocurrency). The authors also predict smart phones, the rise of remote work, media fragmentation, "fake news", and the rise of nationalist-xenophobic populism among the middle and lower-middle classes of the West. However, a number of the book's predictions have not come true. Chiefly, the nation-state has not dissolved or even begun to dissolve; rather, it has strengthened. Despite being more than a decade and a half past the creation of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies still have no actual use. To the extent they have any benefit, it is in their role as sovereign-backed stable coins or blockchain technology employed by major financial institutions. The authors' prediction that Canada and Italy would disintegrate by 2025 is laughably false, and the role of organized crime in the post-Soviet Union weakened under Putin's authoritarian rule. China is barely mentioned in the book, yet the success and influence of China's state-capitalist model is perhaps the major story of the first quarter of the 21st Century. The authors also pooh-pooh the importance of microbes for the future path of the international system, while the Covid-19 pandemic in fact did much to strengthen large nation-states. Further, the authors argue that not just nation-states will devolve, but also firms. However, the first quarter of the 21st Century has witnessed a concentration of economic power among the FAANG and related companies. The book also reveals the danger of predictions in that one is almost always "trapped" in the present. In the mid-to-late-1990s, the authors looked around at the implosion of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Somalia and thought this nation-state disintegration would continue. The authors spent several pages discussing the horrors of Y2K, and even more laughable are the countless pages on Bill Clinton -- a leader of an Arkansas-based international drug cartel, according to the authors -- and his ruthless murder of Vince Foster, among other countless victims. Perhaps more laughable still are the authors' advocacy for intelligent design, the coming global cooling rather than global warming, and the realistic nature of obtaining 20% (or at least 10%) investment returns annually for consecutive decades. Lastly, the book's politics are both nausea-inducing and incoherent. On the one hand, they gleefully predict a future world that is borderline anarchy-capitalist, with a small number of extremely wealthy individuals lording over duchies and principalities as society returns to feudalism. While no serious person can deny that the increasing influence of cognitive abilities in economic standing poses serious issues for egalitarianism, most believe that something must be done to temper this development to some degree. Yet while the authors condemn nationalism or any other form of group attachment, they also call for a return to a traditionalist morality, expressing sympathy for Christianity, Islam, and Confucianism that serves as a common basis for society. But in the ultra-atomized world they call for, where exactly will this common morality come from and how it will be enforced? And how will their anarcho-capitalist vision cope with anti-mercantile (and often pro-poverty) views of many of the world's major religions? Despite the above, the book is largely well-written, and its 400 pages are not a slog.

The authors explain that the first stage of society, Hunting and Gathering, worked for eons. The second stage, Agriculture, spread over millennia, and the third stage, Industrial, took centuries. The fourth stage, Information, will happen during a lifetime. The authors foresaw that individuals will be liberated to educate and motivate themselves, allowing genius to flourish. Cyberspace will render race, gender, age, sexual proclivity, and appearance to be unimportant. Cryptocurrency will prompt power-hungry politicians to lie, tax excessively, and print money that causes inflation. The authors foresee an eventual breakdown of nation states. Their final analyses ends with a hope of optimism. This book was written in 1997 and follows their book, The Great Reckoning. I wish they could write a sequel today.

The Individual will be part of the main revolution in the next decades. Honesty, skills labours and knowledge will be important and essencial

The manner in which the author takes us on a journey through various facets of human civilisation is remarkable. Some of the content here is almost prophetic! I would encourage anyone starting out their career to pick up a business thriller and this is what it is. Written in 1997 when the internet was just on the cusp of taking off, highlighting the emergence of highly skilled and productive self governing individuals - the author challenges the status quo and mentions the decreasing influence of the state in the destiny of a nation. Look to read again and form a book club to share insights from this read and prepare for the digital economy

The Sovereign Individual is incredibly prescient for a book written in 1997. Had I read this book in its year of publication, I probably would have dismissed it as an alarmist-elitist rant. But reading it after two decades since its publication, I am quite surprised how accurate many of its prediction are. The authors rightly predicted the role of cyber economy, crypto-currencies, income disparity, automation of low skilled jobs, rise of nationalism & extreme right-wing groups across the globe, rise of neo-luddites and the role of silicon valley entrepreneurs. Although many other events predicted in the book haven't happened yet, I am inclined to agree with most of their views. The main thesis of the book is that, in the twenty-first century, citizens will be more of a customer to governments and governments will act more as a service provider than a political institution. A thought provoking read. Highly recommended

For the ones that wish to expand their visions, or a simply knowledge hunger, or lost and wish to comprehend the deep structure of things. One of the best book iv read on this topic.