Global Nomads © David Forrest, September 2000 |
| In February 1997, James Dale Davidson and
William Rees-Mogg published a book that provided a rigorous and sweeping
analysis of the disruptive trends that are remaking our world: the growth
of global capitalism, the decline of government and the rise of sovereign
individuals - citizens without nations, citizens of the world.
First published as The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State, the book was reprinted in paperback last year, with the new title The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age. The change in title reflects the shift in our attention from the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War to the promise of a new information-based economy where - for a growing global elite - opportunity knows no bounds. Since Davidson and Rees-Mogg embrace the concept of personal choice, and the right of the individual to escape excessive government, it is not surprising that their book has become a manifesto for libertarians. However, it deserves a much wider audience. The authors’ reputation for forecasting political and social change remains intact as they describe the turbulent forces that are defining today’s political, social and economic realities. The most significant development, they said back in 1997, would be the dramatic growth in the number of global nomads, who would offer their new-economy skills and business smarts in the world market and choose their nationality based on the highest bidder. As Davidson and Rees-Mogg predicted, the number of ‘sovereign individuals’ has grown exponentially in recent years, breaking personal ties to country and challenging borders. Escape Artist – a web site that is unaffiliated with the authors – was established several years ago to provide information to this new mobile professional class and envious wannabes. Its message is the same. “Simply put, we believe that governments and their borders and the concept of government and borders are obsolete. We humans are only holding on to these concepts because we have no clear precedent to call forth to guide us. A hundred years from now this will all be quite apparent - we will recognize that we live on one planet and that the borders were meaningless constructs… The nation-state has ended. Tomorrow is on its way.” The web site – administered in Panama and hosted in Florida - provides resources for moving and living overseas, including detailed country information, contacts, immigration guides, job search tools and tips from expatriates. For those who are not yet ready to move, or who want to cover all the bases, there is advice on offshore investing. A free-subscription monthly web magazine, Escape From America, is emailed to more than 21,000 subscribers. Robert Gallo, editor of the web site, promotes the advantages of obtaining legal second citizenship. “The world is going global and more and more of us are discovering that we can make better livings abroad and that the possession of a 2nd Passport increases our degree of freedom, our latitude of movement and protects the money we earn from unfair taxation… The new expatriates are going to smaller economies, that are moving faster. They are also going to peaceful pristine nations where real estate is still a bargain. They are working globally as telecommuters and they are using the internet to make a living from cyberspace. There is a groundswell of momentum pushing us towards a borderless world - and a borderless world is a good place to be.” The consequences of the shift in loyalties may be literally earth shaking, as privileged and knowledgeable elites forsake their countries in the search for personal advantage and a better place. But will the world be richer or poorer in the end, for this new mobility? Musing on the increasing prevalence and influence of this new mobile tribe, which he called the ‘Third Culture,’ U.S. physicist Lee Smolin wrote, “One can meet young people whose parents each speak a different language, who grew up in a third country, did a university education in a fourth, and now work in a fifth. What the political loyalties of such people will be is impossible to predict, but it seems not impossible that the growing concentrations of such people in the areas of work that most influence public taste and economic growth may catalyze the evolution of nation states into local governments and the invention of a global political system.” The shape of the new world order will be decided in part based on whether these global nomads just opt out or become a voice for global community. RESOURCES: Escape Artist - The Internationalization of the Third Culture (Lee
Smolin) – |
www.innovationwatch.com |