Dear community, I wanted to share with you a piece of relevant literature from a book written in 1997. It discusses the possible advances in technologies in the 21st century and the issues it will pose to governments. I thought it might be interesting at this point for those who have not read tit before.
"The Sovereign Individual - Mastering the Transition to the Information Age"
(you can find it on Google Books or somewhere as PDF download)
The Revenge of Nations
Like an angry farmer, the state will no doubt take desperate measures at first to tether and hobble its escaping herd. It will employ covert and even violent means to restrict access to liberating technologies. Such expedients will work only temporarily, if at all. The twentieth-century nation-state, with all its pretensions, will starve to death as its tax revenues decline. [..] New technologies will allow the holders of wealth to bypass the national monopolies that have issued and regulated money in the modern period.
In the informational Age, individuals will be able to use cybercurrencies and thus declare their monetary independence. When individuals can conduct their own monetary policies over the World Wide Web it will matter less or not at all that the state continues to control the industrial-era printing presses. Their importance for controlling the world's wealth will be transcended by mathematical algorithms and have no physical existence. In the new millennium cybermoney controlled by private markets will supersede fiat money issued by governments. Only the poor will be victims of inflation and ensuing collapses into deflation that are consequences of the artificial leverage which fiat money injects into the economy.
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Lacking their accustomed scope to tax and inflate, governments, even in traditionally civil countries, will turn nasty. As income tax becomes uncollectible, older and more arbitrary methods of exaction will resurface. The ultimate form of withholding tax - de factor or even hostage taking - will be introduced by governments desperate to prevent wealth from escaping beyond their reach. Unlucky individuals will find themselves singled out and held to ransom in an almost medieval fashion. Businesses that offer services that facilitate the realization of autonomy by individuals will be subject to infiltration, sabotage and disruption. Arbitrary forfeiture of property already commonplace in the United States, where it occurs five thousand times a week, will become even more pervasive. Governments will violate human rights, censor the free flow of information, sabotage useful technologies, and worse.
Good shit . very interesting read