The Sovereign Individual
I recently finished reading The Sovereign Individual. It was written in 1997, and attempts to predict changes over the next few decades and maybe even the next century or so.
It really had an impact on me. I don't feel like writing a lengthy review or essay about it right now in one sitting. I'll just continue to make references to it on occasion as they tie into stuff I'm thinking about or worrying about.
One of the things I worry about a lot is the effect of massive displacement of individuals from their jobs due to automation. Indeed the Sovereign Individual said several times that careers will cease to be as we currently know them. What they predicted was very much like the gig economy we hear about so much. They got that one right.
They also said that normal professions are going to be like entertainment or professional sports, in that only a tiny percentage of practitioners are going to earn money, and they will earn massively. Everyone else will be pretty much redundant. This is very much consistent with the massive displacement I mention. It sounds very plausible.
Often the answer we see for the massive displacement problem is UBI (universal basic income). However at the end of the day UBI will need to be paid for by taxes. So it will be subject to the mercy of those small number of huge earners. However, as The Sovereign Individual points out, the wealthy will have options to bail from nations/states where they feel they are taxed too heavily. This is not a debate about morals or right vs. wrong. This is about mega-political conditions where the wealthy simply can't be coerced into subsidizing the rest of us!
So this makes me wonder if there exists a free market solution to UBI, as opposed to the usual social-democratic one that gets attention.
