The possibility of a convivial society depends therefore on a new consensus about the destructiveness of imperialism on three levels: the pernicious spread of one nation beyond its boundaries; the omnipresent influence of multinational corporations; and the mushrooming of professional monopolies over production. Politics for convivial reconstructio

When legacy institutions are beyond saving, build something better. And bury them.

If our reasoning is correct, the nation-state will be replaced by new forms of sovereignty, some of them unique in history, some reminiscent of the city-states and medieval merchant republics of the premodern world. What was old will be new after the year 2000. And what was unimaginable will be commonplace. As the scale of technology plunges, gover

But as we grow in size from a village into a city, replacing reciprocity with capitalism, we lose the underlying indebtedness of the kin structure which keeps us beholden to each other. We lose the idea of a shared self. Instead we become strangers unto whom we owe nothing, and further, with whom we are in competition for resources.