---
title: "Sovereignism Part 1: Digital Creative Destruction"
description: "Exploring the digital disruption of the nation-state and the subsequent amplification of individual sovereignty during the digital age."
url: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/culture/sovereignism-part-i-digital-creative-destruction/
---

# Sovereignism Part 1: Digital Creative Destruction

Exploring the digital disruption of the nation-state and the subsequent amplification of individual sovereignty during the digital age.

---

**Robert Breedlove** · January 25, 2021 · Updated June 27, 2024

A 12-part essay series exploring the digital disrup­tion of the nation-state and the subse­quent ampli­fi­ca­tion of individual sover­eignty during the digital age. This series is based on the 1997 master­work: [*The Sover­eign Individual*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AK9IXXM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)*.*

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690095260-bitcoin-moon-2.png?auto=format)

## Digital Creative Destruction

***"Technology is advancing much faster than our ability to under­stand its impli­ca­tions."***

 *- Ken Goldstein*

Statism is a system of socioe­co­nomic organi­za­tion that origi­nated in the Indus­trial Age. Statism includes all state imple­men­ta­tions of capitalism, commu­nism, fascism, and all other state-isms; it does not refer to these ideolo­gies in any pure sense. Statist imple­men­ta­tions arose in the 20th century when the only known mode of sustain­able human organi­za­tion was a top-down, centrally controlled nation-state. Like feudalism before it, which fell to the Guten­berg printing press, statism has fallen behind the techno­log­ical reali­ties of its era. In the 21st century, digiti­za­tion is devouring every ineffi­cient techno­log­ical imple­men­ta­tion: from media and dating to adver­tising and travel. In the sphere of statism, digital tools are antiquating analog nation-states by radically empow­ering individ­uals in novel and profound ways.

All states are shaped by technology. Mankind exists in continual pursuit of more energy-efficient modes of self-organi­za­tion to preserve the produc­tivity liber­ated by the division of labor while minimizing expen­di­tures neces­sary for security. This is the purpose of society. By subdi­viding labor ever more deeply, mankind’s global treasury of knowl­edge grows ever-richer, informing the devel­op­ment of better tools and systems. As man has achieved more decen­tral­ized modes of securing property and persons, new states have emerged: the world has endured a long progres­sion from the tyranny of ancient Egypt to the repre­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cies of Western Civiliza­tion. In succes­sion with these socioe­co­nomic *“phase changes,”* vast amounts of creative energy are freed in the form of produc­tivity, profits, and capital accumu­la­tion. Optimizing for individual choice is the most energy-efficient strategy for socioe­co­nomic organi­za­tion. Capitalism outcom­peted commu­nism (destroying the USSR in the process) for this reason: volun­tarily adopted rules (free markets) do not incur the same enforce­ment and security costs as systems with imposed rules (unfree markets).

Capitalism triumphing over commu­nism is the classic Schumpterian process of *“creative destruc­tion,”* where innova­tion obsoletes older and less energy-efficient tools and systems, liber­ating energy for alloca­tion to other aims. Tremen­dous economic returns emerge in the wake of this destruc­tive yet creative process. Consider, for instance, that 84 times more man-hours (human energy) were neces­sary to construct the Great Pyramid of Giza than the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, yet due to the knowl­edge special­iza­tion of moder­nity, the Burj stands at a staggering 830 meters — 7 times as tall as the ancient Pyramid. A spectac­ular testa­ment to modern (albeit margin­al­ized) capitalism, the Burj Khalifa was constructed by orders of magni­tude more efficiently than the Great Pyramid of Giza (498 times taller per man-hour).

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690095542-building-graphic-breedlove.png?auto=format)

Socioe­co­nomic systems which best preserve produc­tivity by efficiently securing the division of labor, win.

As a socioe­co­nomic system, capitalism allocates energy more intel­li­gently than commu­nism. Organi­za­tional wellbeing is maximized when individual sover­eignty is prior­i­tized. Capitalism did this well but was hampered by state inter­ven­tion in the monetary and legal spheres. Even more deeply rooted in free market princi­ples, sover­eignism promises to be an unrivaled allocator of energy toward the higher satis­fac­tion of human wants.

## Energy is Truth

***"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of frequency, vibra­tion, and energy."*** 

 *- Nikola Tesla*

Harnessing energy for self-gener­a­tion is the aim of all life. Energy is more efficiently converted to mechan­ical work in strongly bonded systems. In physical systems, these bonds are molec­ular; in economic systems, these bonds are property. Stronger bonds equal greater energy efficiency. Consid­er­a­tions of energy efficiency shape the tools and systems mankind creates for itself. Thermo­dy­nam­i­cally sound struc­tures — those which maximize the utility of absolutely scarce energy — tend to become favored in free market compe­ti­tion. Stronger bonds trans­late into higher power capacity: the ability to retain energy over time without dissi­pa­tion. In a universe where life contin­u­ously competes for its share of finite energy, profli­gacy is ruinous. As the most accurate portrayal of reality, energy is truth. Conser­va­tion of energy, then, is conser­va­tion of truth — the key to success in compet­i­tive condi­tions for organ­isms and organi­za­tions alike.

Trade and money are founda­tional to socioe­co­nomic organi­za­tion. People exchange their energy to produce the fruits of labor. Money is the medium through which people trade energy. Ideally, money is as scarce as the energy neces­sary to produce the fruits of labor to which it lays claims. As the base layer operating system of human cooper­a­tion, this *“thermo­dy­nam­i­cally sound”* money would have profound impli­ca­tions on the socioe­co­nomic systems it upholds. Such a monetary medium would need to be as agnostic to polit­ical machi­na­tions and criminal actions as the thermo­dy­namic reality of absolute energy scarcity it securi­tizes. Stopping the alloca­tion of human energy into *“manage­ment of”* (more accurately, politicking over the power to manage) the money supply, mankind liber­ates his energies to construct more robust socioe­co­nomic struc­tures on the unshak­able founda­tion of immutable money.

***"War is the contin­u­a­tion of politics by other means."***

 - Clausewitz

Thermo­dy­nam­i­cally sound money would estab­lish a *“neutral terri­tory”* where all that matters is how much you can contribute to the produc­tivity of society. Military rank, polit­ical affil­i­a­tion, and proximity to the printing press as deter­mi­nants of position in the global wealth hierarchy would be largely elimi­nated. By giving society a source of indis­putable truth around which it can self-organize, much violence in the world would be disin­cen­tivized and defunded. When rules can’t be bent, and money can’t be easily confis­cated through polit­ical measures, the pursuit of peaceful cooper­a­tion becomes the most produc­tive strategy. Immutable money enervates politics and its Clause­witzian contin­u­a­tion: warfare.

## Sovereignism Rises

***"All human rights may be distilled into one — choice."***

As you may have guessed by now, this ideal, thermo­dy­nam­i­cally sound, and apolit­ical money is Bitcoin. As a 12-year-old digital disruptor to one of the world's most ancient and impor­tant tools — gold — Bitcoin is a tectonic shift in human organi­za­tion. Gold is the 5,000-year-old base layer monetary operating system for all modern systems of human gover­nance: an ancient sover­eignty system corrupted by central banking. Breaking the central­ized stran­gle­hold on money by disrupting it at the base layer, Bitcoin forces a total revamping of the socioe­co­nomic systems derived from money — including the rule of law, private property rights, and various insti­tu­tional forms. Nobody knows what shape this mega-polit­ical transi­tion will take, but it will certainly be an organic, bottom-up emergence since top-down control over this paradig­mat­i­cally new sover­eignty system simply does not exist. To state it plainly: Bitcoin is a momen­tous monetary innova­tion enabling a new mode of non-nation-state human organi­za­tion, a *“purified”* form of capitalism free of nation-state inter­fer­ence and deserving of its own neolo­gism. Let us call the new mode of socioe­co­nomic organi­za­tion enabled by encrypted digital money *sover­eignism*.

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690095758-re-love-ution.png?auto=format)

Bitcoin energizes a revolu­tion in socioe­co­nomic organi­za­tion known as sovereignism.

To fully explore the impli­ca­tions of sover­eignism, let’s begin with the invio­lable first principle of socioe­co­nomics: *man must act.* Action requires energy and implies purpose, as all conscious decision-making involves the attempted achieve­ment of an aim. The aims of man are always toward the allevi­a­tion of anxiety (what Austrian econo­mists call *“want satis­fac­tion”* or *“reduced uneasi­ness”)*. Mankind is the dominant species on Earth because he uses technolo­gies and organi­za­tional systems to channel energy across space­time with more intel­li­gence and toward more profound purposes than any other animal. 

Our higher aims require the channeling of energy at larger spatiotem­poral scales, with more sophis­ti­ca­tion and with greater preci­sion. Used properly, technolo­gies and socioe­co­nomic systems help us alleviate anxieties more easily. Tools amplify the force of our work efforts, increasing the ratio of outcomes to energy expended. 

Systems of socioe­co­nomic organi­za­tion — like capitalism, socialism, and, now, sover­eignism — let us engage in concerted action to inten­sify collec­tive output through the concen­tra­tion of individual atten­tion on ever-narrower phases of produc­tion (the produc­tivity gains resulting from the division of labor). In this sense, tools are organi­za­tions, and organi­za­tions are tools: both are useful for enhancing the overar­ching purpose of human life — the execu­tion of action aimed at anxiety allevi­a­tion. The tools and organi­za­tions are best fit for energy conser­va­tion win over time.

Tools and organi­za­tions are both means for more intel­li­gently channeling energy across space­time. The hydro­elec­tric dam and the nation-state have this in common — they are both intel­li­gently designed reser­voirs and alloca­tors of energy; the dam for hydraulic energy of water and the nation-state for the metabolic, polit­ical, and produc­tive energy of popula­tions. Both, at least temporarily, harness and channel the entropic onslaught of (ecolog­ical and human) nature. But in the end, both give way to the decen­tral­izing tenden­cies of the very nature they seek to contain: water always flows to the lowest places, and people always self-organize in ways that most favor their economic interests.

The ultimate man-made tools for decen­tral­izing power away from top-down insti­tu­tional control are open-source digital organi­za­tions, like those composing the many layers of the internet protocol suite. Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, the George Floyd protests are just a few examples proving the internet poses a major threat to central­ized power struc­tures. Social movements like this are mere tremors of the coming nation-state collapse. As the only non-state digital money, Bitcoin is the value layer of the internet — the first viable competitor to the sover­eignty system gold provided historically.

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690095849-the-5th-layer.png?auto=format)

Bitcoin is the monetary layer of the internet protocol suite, a sover­eignty system compet­i­tive to gold. Image credit: @anilsaidso

An exten­sion of the self-organizing internet ecosystem, Bitcoin is the world’s first *self-sover­eign digital organi­za­tion*. These organi­za­tional forms are the most advanced way of harmo­nizing individual and collec­tive willpower. 

A self-sover­eign digital organi­za­tion like Bitcoin is self-governing and can split in the event polit­ical differ­ences threaten organi­za­tional cohesion (see Bitcoin cash fork). As an intrin­si­cally more adaptive, fluid, and volitional system for allocating socioe­co­nomic energy across space­time, Bitcoin outcom­petes the closed-source, analog, and compul­sory organi­za­tion of nation-states.

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690095907-bitcoin-picture-breelove-neon-computer.png?auto=format)

Bitcoin is an indis­putable sover­eignty system recon­ciling individual exchanges made within the socioe­co­nomic collec­tive. It obviates the need for nation-states and exists with absolute agnos­ti­cism to the man-made systems of law and order which incubated it during its early years. Lever­aging the power of human nature and incen­tives as two of its indis­pens­able operating compo­nents, Bitcoin harnesses human energy to scale its network. 

As a loss-minimized system for storing and trans­fer­ring the fruits of labor, Bitcoin’s fixed money supply gener­ates its own demand (validating [Say’s Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law)) as ever-more wealth is plundered via infla­tion. This is why everyone ends up on Bitcoin’s payroll eventu­ally. A new breed of global citizen is now emerging: inhab­i­tants whose influ­ence, voice, and capital can completely transcend locality, and its various local author­i­ties. Compul­sion finally cedes to civiliza­tion as sover­eignism rises.

## Free Market Governance

***"Micro­pro­cessing will subvert and destroy the nation-state."***

 **- The Sover­eign Individual**

Sover­eignism succeeds by reducing the economic returns tradi­tion­ally associ­ated with violence and coercion. Citizens will demand contract law and property assur­ances of equal integrity to those offered by Bitcoin, other­wise they will not part with their money. In the same way, summoning a stranger to be your private driver for the evening would seem crazy 25 years ago; digital technology will continue to change the nature of trust and human inter­ac­tion. But when money digitizes, the impli­ca­tions are much more signif­i­cant. 

Multi-signa­ture capabil­i­ties of Bitcoin are already being [explored](https://medium.com/@parabolicinvestor/introducing-bitcoin-contract-governance-d28eb046ce8b) as a means for facil­i­tating private contract gover­nance indepen­dent of state courts. This has the poten­tial of growing into a decen­tral­ized alter­na­tive to the tradi­tional justice system. Since money can no longer be censored or stolen, the socioe­co­nomic struc­tures devel­oped atop this base layer operating system will leverage encryp­tion to strive for an equiv­a­lent censorship-resistance.

But like all new births, the transi­tion to this decen­tral­ized state of unpar­al­leled civiliza­tion is bound to be messy. When the economic returns of organizing violence at scale decline, the business models premised on protec­tion from violence (govern­ments and nation-states) neces­sarily shrink and become more local­ized. This macro­eco­nomic counter-swing of the pendulum means violence will become more small-scale and random­ized: akin to what prevailed in the (truly decen­tral­ized) age of hunters and gatherers. Like paleo diets, yoga, medita­tion, Ayurvedic medicine, entheogens, and even Bitcoin (Austrian economic money) — sover­eignism is yet another example of how ancient ways are resur­gent in the digital age.

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690096026-ancient-ways-grahpic.png?auto=format)

Ancient ways — such as yoga, medita­tion, Ayurvedic medicine, paleo diets, entheogens, and even Austrian economics (Bitcoin) — are resur­gent in the digital age.

As surely as capitalism outcom­peted commu­nism, sover­eignism will outcom­pete statism in all its forms. By empow­ering individual freedom in radically new ways, societies adhering to organi­za­tional princi­ples consis­tent with sover­eignism (broad indus­trial priva­ti­za­tion, debureau­cra­ti­za­tion, consen­sual taxation, Bitcoin, etc.) will generate more wealth than the command-and-control economies of more rigid nation-states, and attract more citizens. More compet­i­tive juris­dic­tions mean less toler­ance for bureau­cratic waste­ful­ness. As citizens wake up to this new reality, the modern obses­sion with state politics will fade into a relic of a bygone era.

Contrary to modern miscon­cep­tions, economics drives politics; politics do not drive economics. The legislator’s pen does not create wealth, it can only distribute it. As polit­ical bureau­cra­cies swell to the point of being unsus­tain­able by their under­lying produc­tive economies, desper­a­tion will cause govern­ment overreach to explode, forcing market actors to shelter wealth any way they can. And in the 21st century, capital will find no more unassail­able domain than the digital. As capital flees into the digital domain to escape escalating taxation and infla­tion, govern­ment revenues will fall rapidly, causing them to fragment and fail. As a result, organized crime is likely to grow in scope during this transi­tion. 

In truth, the nation-state is *“organized crime”* — the apparatus of compul­sion and coercion intended to insulate the produc­tivity gains gener­ated by a peaceful division of labor. Legal and police systems protect market actors from endoge­nous threats to the economic wellspring of free trade while the military neutral­izes exoge­nous threats. The nation-state was 20th-century society’s best way of wielding violence to preserve peace.

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690096091-top-10-military-breedlove.jpeg?auto=format)

But the techno­log­ical reali­ties of the 21st century signif­i­cantly change the calculus of violence. Since digital capital cannot be unilat­er­ally seized via taxation or infla­tion, the level of protec­tion services nation-states actually provide will come to reflect their actual produc­tion costs over time. Said differ­ently: in the digital age, nation-states will be forced to compete and *earn* the loyalty of their citizens, like any other free market enter­prise, and will there­fore only be able to charge market rates for their (decreas­ingly neces­sary) services. Tradi­tional legal and police systems required for enforcing contract law, preserving property rights, and peace­keeping in the Indus­trial Age may quickly find themselves facing irrel­e­vance in a world where these services are more efficiently provided by self-organizing digital networks. Coupled with the collapsing tax capac­i­ties of govern­ments, many former state-provided services will fall to software.

## Digital Darwinism

***"Efficiency will become more impor­tant than the dictates of power in the organi­za­tion of social insti­tu­tions."***

 **- The Sover­eign Individual**

As nation-states falter, barriers to market entry, partic­i­pa­tion, and exit will fall too, thereby exacer­bating free market compe­ti­tion and wealth gener­a­tion. In digitally enabled, hyper-compet­i­tive market­places, power law distri­b­u­tions predom­i­nate and winner-take-all effects prolif­erate: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, and now Bitcoin are all examples of this Darwinian digital paradigm. Choice and exper­i­men­ta­tion will become the defining variables of redefining socioe­co­nomic organi­za­tion. New modes of securing life, liberty, and property will be tried, failed, and iterated upon. The ever-present threat of capital flight into unreach­able digital space will force insti­tu­tions wishing to survive to deal with citizens honestly. When govern­ments are demate­ri­al­ized by software, they will become almost unrec­og­niz­ably agile, innov­a­tive, and fragmen­tary. Encryp­tion embroils nation-states in digital acid: dissolving even their most rigid power struc­tures and trans­forming their incen­tive struc­tures from within. Only the most produc­tive and account­able govern­mental functions will remain. With the restric­tions of locality largely dimin­ished, only the most valuable services will earn customer capital and atten­tion. Meritoc­racy supplanting bureau­cracy is distinc­tive to sovereignism.

Digiti­za­tion makes results matter more than decrees, meaning merit will ascend the social hierarchy of values. A world in which all spatiotem­poral bounds are lifted will become an *“age of excel­lence.”* For instance, it is (already) no longer good enough to be the best cover band in your city: thanks to YouTube, you now need to be the best cover band in the world, and across all time, to compete success­fully for the atten­tion of your target audience. Cover bands must even compete with the original band they’re covering in an era defined by digital media! When sales demon­stra­tions are conducted over digital media instead of in-person, execu­tives will deploy only their most adept sales­people no matter where they live. Minimized bureau­cratic barriers will maximize the promo­tion of merit and mitigate polit­ical force­ful­ness in business.

With less to be gained from the use of force, efficiency becomes more impor­tant than magni­tude in terms of channeling energy across space­time. When effec­tive­ness trumps fiat in this way, insti­tu­tions disin­te­grate and reorga­nize, with the resul­tant economic gains largely accreting to the *“cogni­tive elite”* who success­fully presage and prepare for the mega-polit­ical shifts under­foot. Those who synchro­nize their affairs to adapt to this fluid, border­less, and self-organizing digital zeitgeist (largely by being among the first to move their savings into Bitcoin and diver­sify their citizen­ship options) will dethrone the *“ruthless capital­ists”* of the Indus­trial Age to crown themselves the *“sophis­ti­cated sover­eignists”* of the Digital Age.

Digital technology broadens the scope of human possi­bility, making the manifes­ta­tion of sover­eignists’ imagi­na­tions in all their multi-faceted forms seem feasible. Streaming video, encrypted commu­ni­ca­tions, and unstop­pable money let man *“bend space­time”* to his will. But attached to these advanced capabil­i­ties are new costs and risks. Lacking social safety nets and other govern­ment welfare programs will force individ­uals to become more self-respon­sible than they were accus­tomed to being in the Agricul­tural and Indus­trial Ages (hereafter referred to as *The Analog Ages*). Successful sover­eignists will be those who embody the timeless wisdom of Voltaire:

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690096223-with-great-power.png?auto=format)

Sover­eignists who rise to the occasion will no doubt be tested, as nation-states will fight back in an attempt to retain their tradi­tional powers over popula­tions. Nation-states will lose leverage over self-emanci­pated *“sover­eign individ­uals,”* who will be armed with the tremen­dous option­ality engen­dered by digital networks, markets, and capital. Increas­ingly desperate, targeted extor­tion may become the weapon of choice for failing govern­ments. Only those sover­eignists running the best opsec will survive such militaristic measures. As the reality of an existen­tially threat­ening digital future dawns on them, nation-states are unlikely to pull any punches in the subse­quent power struggle — as *The Sover­eign Individual* describes it:

***“Just as monarchs, lords, popes, and poten­tates fought ruthlessly to preserve their accus­tomed privi­leges in the early stages of the modern period, so today’s govern­ments will employ violence, often of a covert and arbitrary kind, in the attempt to hold back the clock. Weakened by the challenge from technology, the state will treat increas­ingly autonomous individ­uals, its former citizens, with the same range of ruthless­ness and diplo­macy it has hereto­fore displayed in its dealing with other governments.”***

Strive as they might, nation-states will succumb to software. Fighting the free flow of data is as futile as fighting the tide.

## Bursting of the Dams

***"In the digital age, the threats of physical violence that have been the alpha and the omega of politics since time immemo­rial will diminish."***

 - The Sover­eign Individual

Nation-states, like dams, can only inter­rupt the inexorable flow of nature’s self-organizing tenden­cies for so long. As taxing capacity plummets, disec­onomies of scale will ensue, making smaller nation-states more econom­i­cally compet­i­tive and, there­fore, attrac­tive to sover­eignists. Glimmers of this transi­tion are already evident, with cities like Miami announcing programs to draw forward-thinking entre­pre­neurs into residency.

Due to a variety of techno­log­ical advances, the advan­tages of scale in a combat will be dimin­ished. Themat­i­cally, digiti­za­tion reduces the size that organi­za­tions must attain to be effec­tive in the use of violence. Guns can be 3‑D printed, cheap anti-aircraft drones can be launched, hackers can cripple militaries, and capital can be mobilized without a trace. Asymme­tries of cost and effect paradox­i­cally result in more symmet­rical power struc­tures. When the cost of defense plummets, offen­sive strate­gies become less lucrative.

In this (re-)decentralization of sover­eignty, the world will undergo a rever­sion to a symmetry of violence last seen during the age of hunters and gatherers. However, this rever­sion will (somewhat counter­in­tu­itively) generate more peace on balance since sometimes the power to take an action is more impor­tant than actually taking it. Similar to the ever-present threat of capital flight forcing insti­tu­tions to be more honest in their dealings, the ever-present threat of local­ized violence will encourage peaceful inter­ac­tion among sover­eign­tists at scale.

Armed with advanced weaponry enabling them to *“punch above their weight”* compared to nation-states, combat advan­tages will accrue to the most versa­tile and adaptive organi­za­tions. Equal access to armaments, download­able in digital space or buyable in unham­pered markets, means sover­eignists will mostly accord politely with one another. Although appealing at a civiliza­tional level, achieving this symmetry of power involves a recon­fig­u­ra­tion of insti­tu­tional struc­tures, an event likely to exhibit great turbu­lence: like nature restoring balance by bursting a dam.

![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1690096385-water-dam-breedlove.png?auto=format)

Non-adaptive struc­tures never stand the test of time. As the most adaptive mode of socioe­co­nomic self-organi­za­tion, sover­eignism outcom­petes all others.

Greater symmetry of and reduced incen­tives for violence mean less mass murders, less school shoot­ings, and less govern­ment war-mongering. However, sover­eignists will still face threats like extor­tion and ransom, which nation-states may wield indis­crim­i­nately as they struggle to remain relevant while dissolving in a flood of digital acid. Demand for protec­tion from failing govern­ments will grow. Opsec will be of paramount impor­tance for anyone of means. Private security details are likely to become increas­ingly common among sover­eignists. State-assigned identi­ties will be abandoned and aliases adopted. As digital technology revolu­tion­izes mankind in every respect, our laws will become antiquated, our insti­tu­tions inverted, our morals reshaped, and our percep­tions perma­nently altered. Sover­eignism will shake the (illusory) sense of socioe­co­nomic stability derived from violence monop­o­lies and portend a total break­down of the heavily politi­cized 20th-century nation-state organi­za­tional model. As *The Sover­eign Individual* words it:

***"Market forces, not polit­ical majori­ties, will compel societies to recon­figure themselves in ways that public opinion will neither compre­hend nor welcome. As they do, the naïve view that history is what people wish it to be will prove wildly misleading."***

*A popular counter­ar­gu­ment to the rise of Bitcoin-enabled sover­eignism is that “nation-states will never allow it.” Such a line of thought is inher­ently flawed since it considers nation-states to be single, indivis­ible, and autonomous organi­za­tions. In truth, nation-states are (more or less tightly) inter­woven constel­la­tions of individ­uals connected through common economic inter­ests, trade networks, socio­cul­tural similar­i­ties, or geopo­lit­ical affil­i­a­tions. Nation-states are not singular socioe­co­nomic aggre­gates, as the mental models of many dissenters falsely assume. The authority holding these outdated organi­za­tions together is, again, derived (either directly or indirectly) from their equity stake in the world’s only analog sover­eignty system: gold.* 

*As the level of service, these nation-state complexes render declines relative to its cost, the incen­tives for individual citizens to exit these violently imposed monetary monop­o­lies will increase commen­su­rately, causing an eventual “rush for the exits” into Bitcoin. State police, judges, and regula­tors alike will face these pressures in their roles as citizens, and only the most stupid or jingo­istic will ignore the economic pressures to exit failing fiat systems. As influ­en­tial state constituents start acquiring Bitcoin, they become aligned with its success, and the power struc­tures cohering every nation-state will be dissolved from the inside out. Self-sover­eignty is in unceasing and universal demand on the free market; Bitcoin immutably speaks this truth to power. Sover­eignism will see nation-state power struc­tures stand naked before truth.*

Although this transi­tion may seem alarming and poten­tially chaotic, the end-game of sover­eignism is an [explo­sion of wealth and a commen­su­rate human flour­ishing in the wake of nation-state disso­lu­tion](https://www.swanbitcoin.com/our-most-brilliant-idea/). Self-organizing digital organi­za­tions stand to become the greatest testa­ments to Schumpterian creative destruc­tion known to history. The breaking of the nation-state dam — a complex of artifice, confis­ca­tion, and conscrip­tion — will unleash human ingenuity to a virtu­ally incom­pre­hen­sible extent. If this thesis holds true, history will regard the internet as merely a prereq­ui­site innova­tion for Bitcoin: the real catalytic break­through in the civiliza­tional conver­sion to sovereignism.

Sover­eignism will eclipse statism in the 21st century. This mega-polit­ical transi­tion is already well underway, and its conse­quences are more evident by the day. In part 2, we will examine Bitcoin as a catalyst to sover­eignism. Functioning as *“the ultimate offshore bank”* for 21st century sover­eignists, Bitcoin is the key innova­tion in a world rapidly submerging into the ungovern­able waters of the digital high seas.

Thank you for reading *Sover­eignism Part I: Digital Creative Destruc­tion*.

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## Robert Breedlove

Robert Breedlove is founder, CEO, and CIO of Parallax Digital, a global Bitcoin-focused hedge fund and consultancy. He considers himself a freedom maximalist and believes he’s found his life’s work in Bitcoin.