Quotes from James Dale Davidson

The Knights of Malta issues its own passports, stamps, and money, and carries on full diplomatic relations with seventy countries.

it is negotiating with the Republic of Malta to reassume possession of Fort St. Angelo.

Iridium as a virtual country, with its own country code: 8816.

In general, risk-averse behavior has been common among all groups that operated along the margins of survival.

Stephenson's "metaverse" is a dense virtual community with its own laws.

Another advantage enjoyed by small farmers in the Dark Ages arose from the adoption in the sixth century of new farming technology: the heavy plow, often mounted on wheels. Used in tandem with an improved harness that allowed peasants to employ multiple oxen, the new technology made it much easier to clear forested land in Northern Europe.19

New land for farming could be had merely by clearing it and sharing part of each new parcel with the appropriate local authorities. This process, known as assarting, gave a comfortable outlet for population growth for centuries after Rome fell. Assarting became particularly attractive in thinly populated northern regions after warmer temperatures in the eighth century made farming more productive.

legal concepts as "avowal" and "distraint" that have now all but vanished.

The history of the Middle Ages is filled with examples of prominent people fulfilling pledges that would seem ridiculous to us. In many cases, the actions proposed involved no objective connection to any benefit other than a vivid demonstration of the importance those undertaking them placed upon the vow itself.

When the payoff for organizing violence at a large scale tumbles, the payoff from violence at a smaller scale is likely to jump. Violence will become more random and localized. Organized crime will grow in scope.

Microprocessing reduces the size that groups must stain in order to be effective in the use and control of violence.

Memorization as a skill will become useless, but the value of quickly learning will increase. We'll be in a world of abundant information and what you'll need to know is how to use it.

Yet "perfection," as C. Northcote Parkinson shrewdly noted, "is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.

financial transactions from hackers and thieves.

His famous example of the pin manufacturers makes this case. Smith explains how eighteen separate operations are employed to produce pins. Because of specialized technology and the division of labor, each employee could make 4,800 times more pins in a day than an individual could fabricate on his own.

Lane, "Economic Consequences of Organized Violence," op. cit.

The scriptoria of the Benedictine monasteries can be understood as an alternate technology to printing presses, which did not yet exist. Costly and inefficient as the scriptoria were, they were practically the only mechanism for reproducing and preserving written knowledge in the feudal period. 3.

While paper money will no doubt remain in circulation as a residual medium of exchange for the poor and computer-illiterate, money for high-value transactions will be privatized.

The capacity to mass-produce books was incredibly subversive to medieval institutions, just as microtechnology will prove subversive to the modern nation-state.

Blood in the Streets and The Great Reckoning.

This may prove to be a close analogy with attempts by the U.S. government today to suppress encryption technology. The Church found that censorship did not suppress the spread of subversive technology; it merely assured that it was put to its most subversive use.

Yet it should not be forgotten that construction of churches and cathedrals helped create and deepen markets for many artisanal and engineering skills. In the same way that military spending of the nation-state during the Cold War unintentionally helped incubate the Internet, so the building of medieval cathedrals led to spin-offs of other kinds, the incubation of commerce. The Church was a principal customer of the building trades and artisans.

Mass production of books ended the Church's monopoly on Scripture, as well as on other forms of information. The wider availability of books reduced the cost of literacy and thus multiplied the number of thinkers who were in a position to offer their own opinions on important subjects, particularly theological subjects

In two previous volumes, Blood in the Streets and The Great Reckoning, we argued that the most important causes of change are not to be found in political manifestos or in the pronouncements of dead economists, but in the hidden factors that alter the boundaries where power is exercised. Often, subtle changes in climate, topography, microbes, and technology alter the logic of violence. They transform the way people organize their livelihoods and defend themselves.