RE: Books for Better Creativity 02, Part 5: Lessons & Insights from "The Sovereign Individual” Ch. 9, 10, & 11 + Final Thoughts
These chapters have been quite thought-provoking.
It struck me that as population increases, it makes sense that our polities will need to shrink, not grow bigger - what I mean by this is at the moment (in Australia), the 'electorate' boundaries change to take into account population density, which increases at least in urban centres.
We have three levels of govt - federal, state, and local. It makes sense that a solution would be to remove one of these levels (I would argue State), but create the Local governments to be bigger and combine the duties of some state responsibilities into their existing ones.
Others could be taken over by federal.
And then if our Local governments were more aligned with 'regional' boundaries - such as Eastern, Southern, Northern etc. where there are clear natural and demographic ecologies.
We could also decentralise our major cities, and create smaller 'hubs' in these regions, which also means not everyone is trying to drive into the centre in the mornings...
Although perhaps with the Info Age, driving to work will phase out, as we can work from home, or have these hubs spread out. For that we need decent infrastructure (i.e., high-speed reliable internet).
Great work, I think I'll check this book out.
Have you ever read Douglas Rushkoff's Cyberia? Sounds like it was written around the same time (early 90's??)
😊🙏🏽☯️
Interesting idea to get rid of state government... That is one idea that goes towards the central question this book left me with, namely: "How do we transition from a world of massive government towards one of small government?"
It's a really hard question because just "ripping the bandaid off" would leave a lot of people dead - if you can't get medical insurance and nobody will treat your cancer, for one example.
But in the long run it really does seem unsustainable, especially through the lens of this book. Like you said, the info age is helping to make some things efficient by reducing commutes to work - but that might not be enough to create a major change in how our society runs.
I have not heard about Cyberia - what's the book about?
Cyberia was written around mid-90’s. Around the beginning when the internet was still not really a thing. Rushkoff covered what he saw as the beginnings of cyber-culture, and covers post-humanism, global electronic village, drugs and designing reality, technoshamanism, and memes as the weapons of cyber-conflict.
Highly recommend it, although I don’t know how well it would read over twenty years later... although it would be fascinating to see how much of Rushkoff’s predictions came true (from memory of them, most of them have).
In every first world nation...the population is decreasing.. A high standard of living is a very effective birth control.
That's interesting, because Australia's population is increasing quite a lot.
ya think?
what's the average number of children that an aussie woman has?
Interesting....... 🤔