First published in 1997, this book explored strategies at the turn of the millennium and the shift from an industrial to an information-based era. The authors, well known for their previous bestseller, The Great Reckoning, in which they had analyzed the impending collapse of the Soviet Union and it's repercussions, claim that societies evolved from being agricultural to industrial and now are heading towards becoming informational. With the current digitization and hence the decentralization of sovereignty, citizens will perceive themselves more and more like customers of their governments and will have better access to information, which gives them more influence. With the awareness and awakening of people on larger scales and the states less capable to levy more taxes, control will be distributed among several institutions such as nations, firms, religions, networks or blocchains. Therefore, force or violence will stop being monopolistic, cyberspace will rise and transform the labor market and permit the ascendance of electronic money. Trouble is, by focusing on the systems and how the new vision of the world will be agile, efficient and protective of an individual’s liberty and assets, this read misses that people are mostly affected by their identity... Associations, essential to humankind, create robust referral points and can also become points of pressure to break whoever is considered a leech or non-conform to a certain criterion. Whose authority will administer, implement the Law and how? Will humans have to rely on mere reason/rationale for this or handover such tasks to senseless robots? We are already living the premises of a New World Order and inequalities have become more and more visible. Dancing away from the roots of what had thrusted human advances in the past centuries can only generate desolate populations, lost and intellectually weak.

This is a sizable reference. I obviously didn't go through it in one go. Some chapters I listened to more than once. I recommend it to understand the evolution of human societies and the possible outcomes of our modern times. Especially when it comes to one’s capital.