A friend of mine runs a boutique consultancy. Recently he told me he's moving to Dubai from the UK. Not for the zero income tax, he said, but he's fed up of taking scrappy projects and being ghosted while his industry suffers and government looks on.
In 2000, Professor Ian Angell published a book called The New Barbarian Manifesto: How to Survive the Information Age. It was a warning. Twenty-five years later it is a roadmap for the world we now live in.
Angell didn't buy the utopian promise of the internet. Instead - labelled as a doom monger - he saw digital technology creating a deep divide where the winners would break free from the rules, borders and taxes of the nation-state. These were the New Barbarians: highly skilled, mobile, self-interested actors using information to sidestep traditional systems.
He wasn't alone. Three years earlier The Sovereign Individual by James Dale-Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg predicted that technology would erode the power of governments and elevate the autonomy of the individual. The sovereign individual would be global not national, prioritising personal freedom and financial independence over civic duty.
They said government levers of tax and legislation would soon appear basic and outdated, leaving people to choose where they pay tax, reside and operate, often in different places.
Back in the day, these two books blew my tiny little mind - and what has become apparent is they have predicted much of what we see today: governments struggling to manage economies while the wealthy shop around for places to work and employ.
Much to the annoyance of people who want to stay put and do their civic duty, every government's budget now serves a dual purpose of being a policy for locals and a marketing pitch to wealthy - and even not-so-wealthy - internationals.
The UAE offers certainty alongside zero income tax. Singapore offers competence with territorial taxation. Switzerland offers stability and privacy. Visas and passports are for sale - and we will see more markets pop up.
These countries are competing on talent vs reward friction. Britain raised taxes and lost people and is now wondering why people are still leaving.
Governments aren't sitting idle, but they are floundering the opportunity in front of them.
The OECD's global minimum tax deal and automatic exchange of tax information represent attempts to rebuild the walls Angell said were crumbling. But these frameworks rely on coordination between competitors - and at the end of the day, each country wants money to flow into their own economies so it will become a selfish, competitive game.
They also fail to capture what matters most: not where money is booked but where talent chooses to live and work.
The AI knowledge divide is widening
Previous technology waves like the internet and mobile eventually democratised access. Currently, AI is doing the opposite. A single engineer with access to frontier models can build products serving millions and generate enormous wealth with minimal infrastructure.
But access to compute, capital and the networks that matter is concentrating in a handful of locations. The gap between those inside the AI economy and those outside it is becoming a chasm. In other words, it's time to learn some new skills - especially in schools, but governments will take years to adapt.
Governments are preparing populations for a world that no longer exists. Schools worry about whether ChatGPT wrote the essay rather than teaching students how to build better models. Universities debate ethics while coding bootcamps teach implementation. The curriculum hasn't changed but the economy has.
"Oh, but critical thinking is essential. The World Economic Forum says so."
Yes it is - but only when it can be applied with razor sharp delivery in the context you live and work in.
In Britain, the top 1% of earners pay 29% of all income tax. When they leave they take their networks and ambition. What remains is a narrower tax base funding services for populations that grow more expensive to support.
The social contract assumed immobility. That assumption is dead.
Governments - regardless of swing - must make themselves more amenable to the AI generation that is about to take off.
They have the option today of accepting they're competing for mobile wealth and talent. That means clear rules, fast decisions and tolerance for risk.
Or they can keep squeezing and watch their tax base shrink. The middle path delivers high taxes without high services, regulation without competence and rhetoric while the people funding the system quietly leave or just lose hope.
The Sovereign Individual book predicted governments would fragment into competing service providers like medieval city-states. We're not there yet but we're closer than anyone in Westminster, Washington or Brussels would like to admit.
My friend moving to Dubai has read the roadmap. The question is why do governments pretend it doesn't exist.