The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

Still another likely spur to sterner morality will be the end of entitlements and income redistribution. When the hope of aid for those falling behind is based primarily upon appeals to private individuals and charitable bodies, it will be more important than it has been in the twentieth century that the recipients of charity appear to be morally d

This underscores the wisdom of the traditional liberal education, which aimed to encourage students to develop their critical faculties and thinking skills. Success in business, as in most areas of life, depends upon being able to solve problems. If you can teach yourself how to solve problems, you have a bright career ahead of yourself. No matter

In the Information Age, it will be technologically feasible to impose tolls, including congestion fees, that accurately price access to highways, runways, and other infrastructure without interrupting traffic flow. Thus the provision transportation infrastructure could be discretely privatized and financed directly by those who use the service. Eco

A good social morality has certain characteristics. It should contribute to the survival of society and of individuals, in a dynamic rather than static way. It should include tolerance and avoid self-righteousness. It should be religious, rather than merely agnostic. It should not pretend to decide questions of scientific fact. It should be neither

Joaquin Aguirre

In the future, excessive scale could be not only counterproductive but dangerous. Larger enterprises make more tempting targets. As practitioners of the underground economy demonstrate, one of the secrets of avoiding taxation is to avoid detection.

In our judgment, the opposite is happening today. Information technology is raising earnings opportunities for the skilled and undermining institutions that operate at a large scale, including the nation-state.

Several features of the new morality can be foreseen. For one thing, it will emphasize the importance of productivity and the correctness of earnings being retained by those who generate them. Another corollary point will be the importance of efficiency in investment. The morality of the Information Age applauds efficiency, and recognizes the advan

What is remarkable is not that the rate of tax charged should fall as a percentage of income in this particular case, but that it should ever have seemed “fair” that different persons should pay wildly different amounts for the services of government during the twentieth century. This is particularly odd in that those who use government services th