interesting new book out on the shelves, (c) 1997, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg called "the sovereign individual". many cpunk themes in this book and I highly recommend it to people on the list. from the back cover: they predict: - collapse of the welfare state and the death of nations worldwide - overhaul of the US Tax system, based on consumption instead of earnings - governments will lose power to arbitrarily regulate economies - banks will go through larger crisis than the 1980s - US government will diminish to the size it was in the 19th century - US government- IRS, CIA, NSA will declare war on groups that try to circumvent the income tax through cyberspace - organized crim ewill grow as central economies break down - central banks will lose power to inflate and control the money supply as paper money is supplanted by cybercash - individuals will gain more autonomy and financial capability - morality will make a comeback. interesting ideas on the role of violence in what makes different government and social systems "viable" and the idea as the government as being in the "protection" business with a monopoly on the use of violence. ideas about digital currencies that compete with each other on the free-market bases. inviability of the "new world order" of worldwide government. lots of neat ideas on cyberspace. role of cryptography in securing private transactions. from p. 324, on cyberspace: "massed armies will mean little in such a world. efficiency will mean more than ever before. because microtechnology creates a new dimension in protection, individuals for the first time in human existence will be able to create and protect assets that lie entirely outside the realm of any individual government's territorial monopoly on violence. these assets, therefore, will be highly susceptible to individual control. it will be perfectly reasonable for you and significant numbers of future Sovereign Individuals to "vote with your feet" in opting out of leading nation-states to contract for personal protection with an outlying nation-state or a new minisovereignty that will only charge a commercially tolerable amount, rather than the greater part of your net worth." an interesting theme near the end of the book is the idea that morality/trust will play a more important role in cyberspace because people will be depending on each other's reputations to conduct business transactions in cyberspace. some of these ideas I've written on here before, and seen much dialogue here. think this will be an influential book that will frame future debate for a long time. the authors verge on what consider "conspiracy theory" at times when they even get into Clinton's drug connections in mena, arkansas. they advocate going to alternative sources of news other than the mass media which will be unable to recognize or report on the reality of the changing world because they are caught up in their own reality distortion fields, very much like those who, at the fall of the roman empire, still believed it existed.