Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Can we just have the synopsis of their End Of The World As We Know It scenario, please?
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Actually, it's not an E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I. book per se, it's an investment book about long term investments, third of a series. It's complex book, so this is leaving out lots...
Governments are based on the ability to project power. If a government can knock off a TPLC (Tin Pot Little Country - Yes, Minister) before lunch out of petty cash, everbody will follow the big country's rules. When a sovereign government can't knock off the burg across the stream, nobody follows the rules of that government.
Technology makes and breaks the ability to project power. The invention of the stirrup created medevial feudalism. Gunpowder destroyed medevial feudalism. The industrial revolution caused the large nation-state. The computer and high-speed communications are gutting the nation-state and large scale capitalism as well.
When feudalism went kaput, so did the cultural mores of feudalism, like chivalry, the dominance of the Catholic Church, the just price rule, the banning of usurary, and the power of aristocratic titles (et. al.).
The comp/comm technology is making it possible to live just about anywhere with a reasonable high standard of living. This is causing the change from being a citizen of a particular nation-state, subject to high taxes, draconian laws, and the chance of being made cannon fodder against your will, to being a customer of a nation-state, picking the one with the laws and taxes you like, and living and working from there (and going elsewhere if you find a better deal). This will cause the abandonment of the large scale nation-state mores of patriotism, welfare states, and predatory taxation. I.P. is one of the "collateral damages" of the shift. (It's barely mentioned in the book.)
The governments in the left-behind nation-states aren't happy about this, nor are people dependent on government handout funded by taxes on the people leaving. Big companies find that little companies are faster on the trigger (sic) and the only big companies that will be left are ones that require large sunk capital expenses for production. Here's how to invest in that sort of world.
That's the best I can do for a 600 page complex book.