Discussion #33: The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg

Welcome to Citizen Scholar! Since launching six months ago we&#8217;re reaching people all over the world, so we thank you for your support. If you enjoy our writing on civic virtue and individual excellence, we humbly ask you to share Citizen Scholar with your family members and friends who may enjoy it. The contents of the audio and text formats are identical and meant to accommodate your preferences. Please let us know if you have any feedback - we&#8217;re always looking for ways to improve!<br/><br/>As soon as we decided to cover a handful of quietly influential books from the 1990&#8217;s, many of you predicted that we would be discussing The Sovereign Individual. Just as many hedge funders and other financial services professionals look to The Fourth Turning for frameworks and predictive value, The Sovereign Individual has been cited by influential figures in the technology industry and is on every recommended reading list for understanding Web 3.0. Peter Thiel&#8217;s introduction to the latest edition is instructive and worth a read. Many of the book&#8217;s predictions &#8211; such as those about economic inequality, the erosion of state sovereignty, and the potential implications of a pandemic in an interconnected world &#8211; have been proven true and reinforced many readers&#8217; buy-in to the underlying theory.<br/><br/>Mogg & Davidson were not the likeliest couple to write a definitive book on the transition from industrial to information-based societies. We&#8217;ll leave aside the opportunity for conspiracy theorizing at this moment. Instead, we&#8217;ll just note that Davidson was an investment advisor and Mogg was an intellectual heavyweight journalist / newspaper editor who would have a popular Substack if he was still alive. His son, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is one of the most prominent politicians in the UK today.<br/><br/>The Sovereign Individual is the last in a series of books in which Mogg & Davidson sought to develop a materialist theory of history with explanatory value for the evolution of