Tag Archives: Nation-states

Doug Casey on the End of the Nation-State

Posted on July 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

We can only hope that the end of the nation-state is coming. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

nation-state

There have been a fair number of references to the subject of “phyles” in this publication over the years. This essay will discuss the topic in detail. Especially how phyles are likely to replace the nation-state, one of mankind’s worst inventions.

Now might be a good time to discuss the subject. We’ll have an almost unremitting stream of bad news, on multiple fronts, for years to come. So it might be good to keep a hopeful prospect in mind.

Let’s start by looking at where we’ve been. I trust you’ll excuse my skating over all of human political history in a few paragraphs, but my object is to provide a framework for where we’re going, rather than an anthropological monograph.

Mankind has, so far, gone through three main stages of political organization since Day One, say 200,000 years ago, when anatomically modern men started appearing. We can call them Tribes, Kingdoms, and Nation-States.

Karl Marx had a lot of things wrong, especially his moral philosophy. But one of the acute observations he made was that the means of production are perhaps the most important determinant of how a society is structured. Based on that, so far in history, only two really important things have happened: the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Everything else is just a footnote.

Let’s see how these things relate.

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Posted in Collapse, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Politics, Propaganda, Technology, Trade, Tyranny

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Doug Casey on the Demise of Nation States, Part 2

Posted on April 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

The second part of Doug Casey’s thesis that nation-states will fail, from caseyresearch.com:

Justin’s note: Yesterday, Doug Casey and I talked about the decline of nation states. Today, we continue our discussion… and look at what could ultimately replace them…

Justin: Will politicians allow this to happen? Or will they use the next crisis as an opportunity to seize more power and wealth from everyday people?

Doug: There’s no question about that. The prime directive of every living entity—including governments—is to survive. They’ll try to do so at any cost. They’re like giant dinosaurs in their death throes, thrashing around wildly. They’re very dangerous. You’re going to have to be a very smart little mammal that hides in a hole to not get crushed by them.

The best template for how this is probably going to evolve was laid out in Neal Stephenson’s book, The Diamond Age. In that book, which is a work of genius, Stephenson explains how the world is likely to reorient itself. He expects most nation states will dry up and blow away.

Sure, some will still exist, but most will be replaced by what he calls “phyles.” These are support groups based on whatever you value most. These phyles will provide services like defense and insurance. So, they’ll offer all the benefits that nation states offer today but they’ll necessarily do a much better job, because they’re private, voluntary, and cohesive.

More and more people will discover who their real countrymen are. You’ll find out who you really want to associate and ally yourself with. And it won’t be people who just so happened to have been born in the same area as them, many of whom you have nothing in common with except proximity or government ID. Some may even be enemies or parasites…

Justin: And he thinks these phyles will replace governments completely?

Doug: There will still be governments that control certain geographical areas. After all, governments have lots of force. And most people are like chimpanzees; they crave, or at least accept, leadership by the biggest and most aggressive monkey. But I expect many will eventually be replaced by phyles. This will be technology driven.

And with migration unfolding the way it is, Africa is going to have hundreds of millions of Han Chinese changing the situation on that continent. They’re basically going to take over that continent. At the same time, scores of millions of African migrants will take over Europe.

Those are two big trends that I feel certain about. Who knows what other side shows will happen? But the nation state in its present form is a dead duck. And good riddance to it.

To continue reading: Doug Casey on the Demise of Nation States, Part 2

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Doug Casey on the Demise of Nation States

Posted on April 21, 2018 | 1 comment

Doug Casey thinks nation-states are slated for extinction, not to be replaced with something even bigger and more centralized, but rather towards decentralization, autonomy, and interaction among those with common interests. From Casey at caseyresearch.com:

Justin’s note: Longtime readers know what Doug Casey thinks of nation states. He says they’ve mostly been an “inefficient, counterproductive, and expensive nuisance” and a “testimony to how thoughtless the average person is.”

He also says nation states are going out of business.

I recently called him up to get an update on where we are today… and what to expect going forward.

Today and tomorrow, I’m sharing our discussion. I think you’ll enjoy…

Justin: So, Doug. Are nation states really in decline?

Doug: They’re definitely in decline, and that’s a good thing—nothing to be concerned about. It’s cause for optimism. The question is why are they falling apart?

Some background. The concept of the nation state came about with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, something that everybody only vaguely remembers from a college history class. Actually, today’s students will probably never even hear of it. That class has likely been replaced with Gender Studies or Black History.

Why was it so important? It redirected the concept of “loyalty” away from an individual—a prince or a king—to the State itself. A geographical area now wasn’t so much the possession of a ruler, as a possession of a State. This really got the concept of nationalism going; nationalism is just tribalism writ large.

That’s how the concept was born. But the idea of a nation state is coming to an end. Now almost anybody can go almost anywhere thanks to jet travel; you’re no longer married to one place, like a medieval serf. And you can communicate with anybody anywhere on the planet thanks to the Internet; that makes it much harder to keep all the sheep thinking the same thing.

So, first, people realized that it’s completely ridiculous and dysfunctional to be loyal to some thug who, through an accident of birth or through military competence, set himself up as a prince. Now they’re discovering that it’s equally stupid to be loyal to a government that’s running a country.

To continue reading: Doug Casey on the Demise of Nation States

 

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