Quotes from James Dale Davidson

You cannot tax unless you can compile records and issue receipts. The symbols employed in the accountant's ledger became the rudiments of written language, an innovation that had never existed among hunters and gatherers.

An eruption of microparasites, such as a viral pandemic, rather than drastic changes in climate or topography, would more likely disrupt the megapolitical predominance of technology.

in the future, one of the milestones by which you measure your financial success will be not just now many zeroes you can add to your net worth, but whether you can structure your affairs in a way that enables you to realize full individual autonomy and independence.

Violence is the ultimate boundary force on behavior; this, if you can understand how the logic of violence will change, you can usefully predict where people will be dropping or picking up the equivalent of one-hundred-dollar bills in the future.

Every social system, however strongly or weakly it clings to power, pretends that its rules will never be superseded.

Cultures are not matters of taste but systems of adaptation to specific circumstances that may prove irrelevant or even counterproductive in other settings.

In almost every competitive area, including most of the world's multitrillion-dollar investment activity, the migration of transactions into cyberspace will be driven by an almost hydraulic pressure—the impetus to avoid predatory taxation, including the tax that inflation places upon everyone who holds his wealth in a national currency.

When weapons or tools of production can be effectively hoarded or monopolized, they tend to centralize power.

We live in the time of the computer, but our dreams are still spun on the loom.

The more apparent it is that a system is nearing an end, the more reluctant people will be to adhere to its laws.

You cannot friend upon conventional information sources to give you an objective and timely warning about how the world is changing and why.

The sheer challenge of survival in premodern societies always constrained the behavior of the poor.