The Sovereign Individual
The authors predict that digital technology will weaken territorial institutions and increase the mobility of wealth and individuals.
The argument links technological change with changing political organisation.
Technology can make moving money or work easier than moving institutions. The authors build a political forecast around that imbalance, but the freedom gained may belong disproportionately to people already resourced.
Earlier economic transitions are interpreted through the costs of coercion.
Digital activity can reduce dependence on physical location.
Mobile capital may challenge traditional taxation and state authority.
Individuals with resources could acquire greater bargaining power.
A prediction also contains assumptions about what society should become. Those preferences need to be distinguished from evidence that the transition must occur, or that its consequences would benefit everyone.
The predicted benefits are not distributed equally.
Institutional resistance and collective needs complicate the proposed transition.
Its policy preferences reflect a particular political-economic standpoint.
The forecasts are speculative rather than established historical necessities.
The central question concerns who gains agency when territorial constraints weaken.
The central question concerns who gains agency when territorial constraints weaken.
If digital wealth moves more easily than territorial institutions, who gains freedom and who remains responsible for shared needs?