"The more apparent it is that a system is nearing an end, the more reluctant people will be to adhere to its laws. Any social organization will therefore tend to discourage or play down analyses that anticipate its demise. This alone helps ensure that history's great transitions are seldom spotted as they happen. If you know nothing else about the future, you can rest assured that dramatic changes will be neither welcomed nor advertised by conventional thinkers.

You cannot depend upon conventional information sources to give you an objective and timely warning about how the world is changing and why. If you wish to understand the great transition now under way, you have little choice but to figure it out for yourself."

- The Sovereign Individual, Chapter 2.