It is for people who care more and see more than the average person, for those who are capable of seeing the broader picture, outside of their perspective in a spectacle we are witnessing – for libertarians.

We are living in the middle of The Fifth Turning in human history:

1) The first one was the so-called “Neolithic Revolution” when people invented agriculture. This changed everything because from that moment humanity started to have a sedentary lifestyle and a concept of property went into play. It is called a “Revolution”, but it took thousands of years.

2) The second one was the fall of Rome when Greco-Roman civilization died, and a new, Christian one, rose from its ashes. It took hundreds of years.

3) The third one is the most unknown and the least spoken of, but it is as important as the rest (especially as a parallel to modern times) – the fall of the Catholic Church and feudalism after the Renaissance. Similarly to the Roman Empire in the 2nd century, feudal Christian civilization and the power of the Catholic Church had their peaks during the Renaissance. After that, they collapsed. The Catholic Church in that time was like totalitarian Nanny-States today, with high-taxes, overwhelming regulations, huge bureaucracy and corruption so extreme and prevalent that it is hard to believe; moreover, the printing press enabled people to spread ideas and knowledge, ending the Catholic Church monopoly in this domain, and gunpowder/muskets enabled simple man to kill a knight – this three things resulted in protestant revolutions and the fall of feudalism, which lead to religious wars, to Catholic Church being forced to reform to survive (and never again returning to its previous level of power and influence), and later to the emerging of capitalism and the end of absolute monarchies.

Democratic reforms would not be possible if common men could not have the access to knowledge and could not defeat knights in combat. This took hundreds of years too, but was faster paced than the collapse of Rome, because of the printing press.

4) The fourth one was The Industrial Revolution, which enabled humanity to escape the “Malthusian trap” and caused the growth of prosperity never seen before in human history. This also changed everything and it took “only” decades to one hundred years. The pace of change was unprecedented.

5) Now, we are in the middle of the fifth one, which we can call “Internet/Blockchain/Information Revolution” or just “Transition to the Information Age.” And it will be and already is the most revolutionary and fast-paced of all the above. “Most fast-paced” because of two reasons. For the first time in history, information can be transmitted across the world at an instant and this is available for most of the people around the globe. The second reason is parallel to the first: there is an unprecedented interconnectedness of the global economy/world with the cheapest and most available means of travel in history. And “most revolutionary” because the global economy (including the flow of information) will be more and more borderless and not so tied to the States’ territories, and it will not be under their control.

This has very interesting consequences, but first let us look at most of the modern States – they are just like the Catholic Church in the Reinassance, with high-taxes, high-regulations, high-bureaucracy, high-corruption and treating their citizens like slaves or cattle. Moreover, they are insanely-debted and are destroying their currencies – and livelihoods of all – by inflation, like the collapsing Roman Empire. They are in a huge crisis and it can only go worse and worse, until the imminent collapse.

Liberal-democracies turned into socialist-democracies, where Nanny-State robs everyone to redistribute income and this is pushing elite-people and capital offshore. But with the rise of the Internet economy and cosmopolitan Internet/global-culture, “voting with feet” and/or moving firms/capital to other jurisdictions is only easier and easier. More and more firms will be moving to low-tax, more free-market/smaller government jurisdictions, which will only accelerate the rate of collapse of the nanny states which cannot turn back at this point from the path they are on, with the unpayable debts, established redistribution systems and aging/dying societies.

So during this transition the Western civilization, which is already historically-dead from the cultural perspective (the same as the Roman culture which in the 4th–5th century had nothing do to with the classical Roman culture from a few centuries earlier), will finally collapse, the USSA and the dollar system will collapse as the Roman Empire and all the Western-Nanny States will collapse as the Catholic Church in the 16th century – and the Internet and Blockchain technology are similar by their meta-political significance to the printing press and gunpowder/muskets of that time.

Blockchain takes money out from the hands of the states, and on the foundation of this Internet-money, it builds an Internet economy that is global and hard (if not impossible) to control. As the Internet economy is not regulated and by its nature is more immune to taxation, and takes the best minds from all over the world and lets them exchange ideas and information freely, the pace of its growth will be much higher than the non-Internet economy under the occupation of the states. Moreover, the rising inflation, which cannot be stopped at this level of state-debt, will accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies over States’ fiat-currencies.

Liberal/free-market/small-government countries (especially small-sized) will want to take this fleeting capital for themselves, so they will start to compete to be even more liberal/free-market and to treat their citizens more and more like customers rather than slaves. This will mix with the effects of the Blockchain technology itself, which gives societies options to be more effective by being organized more bottom-up/libertarian; in other words, the Internet economy with Blockchain changes the incentive structure to push societies in the direction of anarchy without them even knowing it. And with the rise of libertarian, global, Internet culture and the spread of libertarian ideas – which for the first time in history will start to be accepted with open arms in this liberal/free-market/small-government societies [and if you do not believe me, you have never talked with (especially young) Taiwanese or Hong Kongers about Anarcho-Capitalism, to which they are more open than Western so-called “libertarians”!], because libertarians will be explaining to these societies things they already believe in and act upon – we and our ideas will be welcomed with open arms, especially if we bring capital and innovations. Thanks to the mix of these things, these liberal/free-market/small-government societies will start to transform into libertarian ones and their States will evolve into more firm-customer-like ones (Liberal Mini-States) or even purely private/voluntary ones (Anarcho-Capitalism).

And when the first libertarian societies would emerge, which will be super-successful economically and culturally and in all aspects, parallel to this, the world would be experiencing a crisis of Nanny-States and Statism in general. After that, the libertarian revolution with its established institutions (technological, societal, and cultural) will be spreading like wildfire across the globe, the same as the democratic revolution, but much-much faster. The first libertarian country will be Taiwan (I am sure of it), later some other Asian ones like Hong Kong, Singapore, maybe Malaysia or even New Zealand, and small European ones likes of Malta or Switzerland and later countries likes of Brazil (which has many libertarians) or Mexico (to which libertarians are escaping from the collapsing USSA – and this trend will get even stronger). USSA and Western Europe would be in ruin, Eastern Europe will be like Eastern Rome (Byzantine Empire), they would try to survive and continue a dead-civilization for a longer time, maybe they will even try to revive it in a different form like the Byzantines tried. China would collapse from revolutions and other internal changes. Japan and Korea would be in crisis, but a lesser one than the West, and they will use their technological development to enter the Information Age to survive. It will be more or less something like that.

When the Internet with the Internet economy will be taking over the world, and freeing it, the world will be more and more like the Internet, people would be integrating more and more not because of nationality, but because of shared values and interests – there will be more and more people who can earn money online and live anywhere in the world as they please, and the internet/global culture will be bringing us, especially my generation and all younger ones, closer to each other cross-borderly. Nation-States and the concept of nationality will die during this transition as feudalism and chivalry died with printing press and gunpowder/muskets. Moreover, the Internet culture will be taking over the “outside” world, so the lives of East-Asians will be more and more anime-like. And probably all the old major religions will be dying or transforming, and new forms of spirituality will emerge, more universal ones. There are many things like that. Generally, we will end up with a new, more global civilization, and more Asian-flavoured (not Western-oriented like before).

So, for the first time in mankind’s history, the economy will triumph over politics. And individuals will be free and powerful like never before. Individuals could be their own banks, would be able to not pay taxes if they would wish, could live anywhere, and States would be kneeling to them, not the other way around, that is why the book that prophesied most of this in 1997 was called “Sovereign Individual.”

But the worst place and time to be during these big transitions is to be in the middle of them – in the middle of the collapsing Rome, in the middle of religious revolutions and wars, and now in the middle of the collapsing Western world, the bankruptcy of Nanny-States, the biggest financial crisis in history and the last push of State-Rulers…

And I want to say something to people who think that rulers are on the way to building a technocratic prison – the meta-political things by their nature cannot be defeated by politics; States cannot even stop Bitcoin, let alone the whole Internet/Blockchain/Information Revolution. Of course, they will try in their arrogance, and it will be a very painful push for totalitarianism, but it will be the same as with the Roman rulers who could not stop the fall of Rome or the Catholic elites who could not stop the Protestant reformation and the fall of feudalism, it is not in their power, these are huge meta-processes, they have already lost…

So the objective for all of you is to… survive. If you survive this transition, you can call yourself a winner. Why? Because this will be the craziest ride in the history of humanity, with the fastest pace of all the earlier transitions, and the collapse of the Western world will be messy, and the push for State-power will be dangerous.

But if you are even more ambitious, then you can, of course, take precautions like escaping the Western world to a more liberal/free-market/small-government and therefore safer country (because in the incoming collapse of Nanny-States – your government will be your biggest enemy) or at least preparing yourself for that scenario, and/or using what is coming to your financial advantage, if not by creating an internet-business, or Blockchain-based, or by learning programming or other things like that, then at least by smart investment choices. Moreover, aside from universal skills, the more cosmopolitan/liberal/universal mentality you have, the better you are suited for the next era.

So – the collapse of Rome (USSA) mixed with the Renaissance crisis of the Catholic Church and feudalism (Nanny-States and Nation-States), but with the Internet. And it already started to accelerate this year. Get ready, be aware, and adopt a broader perspective to understand what is going on, the next years will be insane. But after that, for the first time in humanity’s history, we will witness the birth of a free man – The Sovereign Individual.

Adam Danisz