Workaday citizens must occasionally tune into the media charade and wonder what sort of crazyglue is holding this place together... and then perhaps they flip the channel and try not to think about the generational larceny that passes for government in this country.
On the surface, First World nation-states will appear to strengthen as the New World Order coagulates... but the truth is the standard of living in developed countries is falling. Power is shifting towards Asia. Outsourcing and offshoring are but two steps in a calculated process of economic migration that will trap a generation (at least) of western citizens between rising costs/taxes and diminishing income/purchasing power.
One interesting sub-current (undertow?) of the global tide has been the secession of individuals, families and entire cultures away from the decaying (western) paradigm of nation and citizenship based on geography, and towards self-determination and individual sovereignty. Five centuries of relentless globalization has produced an extranational class of corporate/cultural elites... uberwealthy corporate and banking royalty - and their ivy-educated courts - circling the globe with the latest technological wizardry. This privileged class has, ironically and quite unintentionally, created a rough template for relative economic freedom which - again catalyzed by technology - is within reach of a broader productive/salaried class worldwide. The ripening of the information age will facilitate further extranational migration among this mobile 'productive' class. The cost/benefit analysis for the tax-payer (as an accidental, geographically-determined citizen) is weakening... thus quite rationally, an ever increasing number of productive individuals will question national allegiance (and the economic serfdom it implies) based on physical boundaries and notions of patriotism. A wired world will render the physical boundaries of nations (and legal jurisdiction) obsolete... a form of extranational privatized citizenship heretofore the domain of the corporate and political masterclass will find mass appeal among the over-taxed productive class (formerly the middle class).
Even in the early days of national economic/political disintegration we saw evidence of dissent... a revival of common sense that came to question the fundamental construct of the status quo, itself a thin patchwork of accumulated mistakes and half-measures held together by a thread of fear and tradition. Beneath the predictable tax revolts and populist demonstrations was a disintegration of the rule of law (favoring the individual and self-determination). The centrally-managed, single-payer future under private/public (corporate/federal) stewardship recently sold as 'hope-and-change' will be short-lived. The state cannot afford it's promises and it will not honor them.
The citizen-as-customer paradigm will widen the gap (abyss) between rich and poor. Quite simply, those who can afford to escape imploding western nanny-states will do so. Small, wealthy, low-cost countries will compete for mobile/productive individuals and wealthy retirees... like gated communities on a national scale (and supported by citizen-centric technology). Those who remain stuck within decaying western nations will suffer a sort of martial law and financial servitude that erases the distinctions between 'first-world' and 'third-world'. Such is a world where credit, debt and collateral are measured in hard assets, not fiat currency. The relationship between the haves and have-nots will resemble feudalism, with private security enforcing an otherwise economic segregation.
Economic segregation encourages cultural and political segregation. New evidence of this phenomenon was abundant even before the economic crises of 2008 and 2010. The wealthy have already built private, gated enclaves for themselves in and around every major world city (these in addition to the exclusive island and mountaintop retreats that allow the privileged to interact with a filtered, sanitized version of nature). The real estate racket is like the cover charge at a nightclub: those without the means (or the interest) don't get in. In fact, some cities were themselves completely gentrified during the bubble years, pushing generations of middle-class and blue-collar families into a distant, unsustainable ex-urban hinterland. Self-selecting enclaves utilizing technology will manifest in a similar way in a virtual landscape, all but severing the link between citizen and soil.
--MP
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