Capitalism and the Future of Nation States
European Straits #150
Hi, it’s Nicolas from The Family. Today, I’m pursuing a conversation initiated on Twitter about the future of nation states—and why ambitious capitalists need them more than ever.
Stefano Bernardi, an angel investor and scout for Atomico, recently tweeted about the idea that nation states could disappear. He asked which books were worth reading to get an idea of what’s next. My first answer was that maybe nation states would be replaced by city states, and so these are the books I suggested:
City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Sea (Roger Crowley, 2013)
The memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore (published in 2000).
Then I had another idea, which was that maybe nation states would be circumvented by networked communities connected by trade, finance, religion, or a given mission rather than citizenship. On this hypothesis, I find these precedents worth studying:
The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Malcolm Barber, 2012)