Summary of the Sovereign Individual hypothesis on the demise of nation states

- Nation states are a relatively new invention in human history terms.

- They were created to project power in more and more influentual ways and compete with other power projecting nations.

- However, in order to persist they need two things: 1) an ideology to unite their citizens under (patriotism) and 2) an ability to extract resources from their citizens in order to project power.

- 1) is crumbling as more and more people rightfully embrace a global perspective.

- 2) can only be maintained through Fiat currency. If governments tried to steal people’s wealth through taxes to the same extent they are currently doing through inflation, there would be a revolution tomorrow.

- Once governments lose their access to inflation to steal from their citizens, their power will quickly deteriorate because they will no longer be able to gather enough resources to project power. As an example, the Vietnam war would not have been possible in its extent without the decoupling from the gold standard.

- “Cybercurrencies” (#Bitcoin) takes the power of inflation out of governments’s hands.

- As nations crumble, there is also a smaller and smaller incentive for other nations to invade them because they know that it’s nearly impossible to subjugate people and take their resources.

- The utopian outcome is a world that is utterly tribal AND utterly global at the same time.

- Imagine living in the city state of London with all its customs and traditions, yet not being tied to an overreaching and expensive national government and being able to take your money and be able to pay with it anywhere else in the world.