In a time of social tensions and challenges to our democracy, we look to the State for answers and solutions – but what is that State, and what should its role and responsibilities really be? This book leads us to explore these fundamental questions – and as we do so, we find that the future may be less Utopian than we think. After the Leviathan offers us not only the answers to some of the most pressing questions of today but also hope and comfort that such change is possible.

After the Leviathan is a speculative report written from the vantage point of a future society that has abandoned the centralized, bureaucratic states of the “Old World”. Instead, it reimagines the State as a decentralized, insurance and investment network of Mini-States and a Maxi-State founded on citizens’ right ‘to be left alone’. Built around three core principles – the priority of individual autonomy (“the right to be left alone”), the functional equivalence of all life forms (embodied in the MiniMax principle), and a collective focus on extreme risks – the New State is organised around Mini-States operating as mutual insurance vehicles which have created a Maxi-State to provide catastrophe insurance and long-horizon investment functions. The book explains how this state is governed, administered, and how it is funded and manages its monetary affairs. Drawing on philosophical, economic, and ethical arguments, the work explores how mutual insurance, reciprocity, and decentralised governance can form the foundation of a more robust, effective and morally coherent state.

Author Biography

Andreas Wesemann was born in Vienna, and has lived and worked in the UK, the USA and Asia for the past 35 years. Educated at Cambridge and the LSE, he is a partner at Ashcombe Advisers LLP, an investment banking business in London. He is the co-founder of two free schools in Hackney with a 1,000 pupils, and author of two books, Chronicle of a Downfall. Germany 1929-39 (originally published in German by Czernin Verlag) and The Abolition of Deposit Insurance. A modest Proposal for Banking Reform. He was a trustee of the Wiener Holocaust Library in 2014-24 and lives in London.

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