Birmingham was built as one of Britain’s great expansion cities. Its industry, transport systems, shopping districts, office centres, and suburbs were all shaped by an economy based upon increasing energy use, increasing movement, and continuous growth. Roads expanded, railways were reorganised around commuter demand, retail concentrated into large centres, and employment became increasingly specialised and centralised.
Today, Birmingham Council is, in effect, financially bankrupt. The city council has faced a severe financial crisis, service reductions, and an inability to sustain previous levels of expenditure. This is usually discussed as an isolated management or political problem, but it may also be a sign of something much larger: the gradual weakening of the growth economy upon which large modern cities depend.
A city such as Birmingham requires constant economic expansion to maintain:
extensive public services
large transport systems
complex administration
welfare support structures
continual infrastructure maintenance
When growth weakens, these systems become increasingly difficult to finance. The issue is not simply debt, but the inability of the surrounding economy to generate enough surplus to support the scale of the system that has evolved.
In this sense, Birmingham’s financial problems may not be an exception. They may be an early indication of structural economic change throughout the UK.
Economic shrinkage and the decline of discretionary activity
As the economy begins to shrink rather than grow, the city does not suddenly collapse. Instead, it gradually reorganises itself around different priorities. The important change is not simply less activity, but a change in the type of activity that can be sustained.
The first effects are in discretionary markets. Birmingham contains large sectors dependent upon discretionary spending:
retail shopping
hospitality
entertainment
leisure travel
conferences and events
non-essential services
These activities depend upon surplus income and constant circulation of money. When energy costs rise and real incomes weaken, discretionary spending contracts first. This affects employment quickly because many service-sector jobs depend upon high customer turnover and dense city-centre activity.
As these sectors weaken, employment becomes more unstable. Some work disappears entirely, while other work becomes part-time, informal, temporary, or localised. Unemployment, therefore, becomes less cyclical and more structural. The city is no longer reorganising around growth, but around constraint.
At the same time, public services become harder to maintain at previous scales. Birmingham depends heavily upon tax flows generated by a large urban economy. If economic activity weakens, pressure increases on transport subsidies, social services, housing support, and infrastructure maintenance. This creates a feedback process in which both public and private systems experience contraction simultaneously.
The result is not a uniformly declining city, but an uneven one. Some districts retain strong economic activity while others lose investment, transport frequency, or local services. Birmingham is gradually becoming less of a single, integrated labour market and more of a patchwork of differing local conditions.
The changing role of transport
Transport is central to this transition because Birmingham’s modern structure depends upon high mobility.
The city currently operates through:
extensive commuter rail
railway and tram systems
large bus networks
motorway access
continuous movement into and out of the centre
This structure assumes that large numbers of people travel considerable distances every day for work, shopping, and services.
In a shrinking economy, this assumption weakens.
Rail and Trams are likely to remain the strongest element of the system because they are efficient where fixed corridors already exist. Main lines and major commuter routes continue, but their purpose changes. Instead of supporting endless expansion, they increasingly become essential movement corridors.
Trams and light rail become especially important because they support concentrated movement patterns while using less energy. Birmingham’s tram system, therefore, becomes more than urban transport infrastructure. It begins to shape where settlement and activity concentrate.
Buses become more difficult to sustain at current levels because they depend heavily upon fuel costs, labour availability, and subsidies. Peripheral routes become thinner and some services reduce in frequency. The result is a more hierarchical system:
strong rail and tram corridors
weaker peripheral movement
reduced discretionary travel
Transport no longer functions primarily to support expansion. It becomes the framework through which a more localised city continues to function.
Housing nodes and corridor settlement
As movement becomes more expensive and less flexible, housing patterns will also change.
Instead of continual outward suburban spread, settlement begins to concentrate around reliable transport corridors, especially tram and rail stops. Along these routes, new housing nodes emerge.
A housing node is not a large new town. It is a concentrated cluster of activity built around a station or tram stop. Typically it contains:
medium-density housing
local food retail
health and care services
small repair and craft businesses
walkable access to transport
The tram stop or station becomes the centre of daily life.
This is a major change from the late twentieth-century development pattern where housing estates spread outward and depended almost entirely upon private car movement. In a lower-energy economy, transport corridors become fixed anchors for settlement.
The city, therefore, begins to reorganise itself into linked corridor systems rather than a single dominant centre with vast commuter catchments.
Economic and social restructuring inside the city
As discretionary employment contracts, Birmingham will also experience changes in its social geography.
Some districts adapt better than others depending upon:
transport access
local economic resilience
housing conditions
community networks
proximity to functioning corridors
Neighbourhoods with strong local connections and practical services will stabilise even while city-wide growth weakens. Areas dependent entirely upon large-scale retail or office employment may struggle more severely.
This can increase unevenness between districts. The city becomes more differentiated, with some areas functioning as active local nodes while others lose economic density.
However, localism does not necessarily mean fragmentation. Under pressure, neighbourhood-level cooperation can become more important:
local food systems
repair economies
informal exchange
care networks
small-scale enterprise
The city therefore changes from a highly centralised economic machine into a more distributed network of local economies connected by transport corridors.
Birmingham as a corridor city
Historically, Birmingham developed as a junction city connected to multiple outward routes:
towards Stratford and Warwickshire
towards Redditch and Worcestershire
towards the Black Country
towards Coventry and the east
towards Staffordshire and the north
In a localised economy, these outward corridors regain importance because they connect the city to:
smaller settlements
productive countryside
food-producing districts
secondary market towns
The city becomes less dependent upon long-distance national systems and more dependent upon its surrounding hinterland.
Rail and tram corridors, therefore, become not simply passenger systems, but structural links between urban demand and nearby productive landscapes.
The underlying transition
The fundamental shift is this:
Birmingham moves from being a growth-oriented metropolitan system into a corridor-based network of local economies.
Movement still exists, but it becomes more selective and more essential. Housing concentrates near transport nodes. Local services regain importance. Discretionary activity reduces relative to practical activity. Rail and tram systems become more valuable where they already survive.
The city does not disappear, nor does it return to the nineteenth century. Instead, it reorganises itself around proximity, accessibility, and reduced surplus energy.
What emerges is a different kind of city:
less expansive
less centralised
more uneven
but potentially more locally grounded
In that sense, Birmingham’s financial crisis may represent more than municipal failure. It may be an early sign of a wider transition in which large cities built for continuous growth are forced gradually to reorganise around a more localised and constrained economic reality.
The growing pressures on Britain’s transport system may ultimately strengthen the case for localism.
For most of the industrial era, the economy depended upon cheap transport:
cheap diesel
expanding road systems
large freight movements
centralised warehousing
mass commuting
national retail chains
long-distance food distribution
This allowed Britain to organise economic life on an increasingly large scale.
Food travelled hundreds of miles. People commuted long distances daily. Goods crossed the country overnight. Large urban centres absorbed workers from vast surrounding areas.
But all of this depended upon abundant surplus energy and affordable transport costs.
As diesel prices rise and the wider economy weakens, that model becomes progressively harder to sustain.
Heavy goods transport is particularly vulnerable because fuel is one of the largest costs for haulage firms. Some small operators already struggle with fuel costs and narrowing margins. At the same time, rail freight also faces rising energy and infrastructure costs because large parts of the railway system still depend upon diesel locomotives or expensive electrification.
Governments may attempt to support both road and rail systems through subsidy, but government itself faces growing financial pressures:
debt interest
welfare spending
NHS costs
infrastructure maintenance
ageing population costs
There are therefore limits to how much support can be provided indefinitely.
At the same time, households increasingly cannot afford continual increases in:
transport fares
fuel prices
delivery costs
energy bills
general living costs
The result may gradually become a contraction in transport demand itself.
This is especially important because much of Britain’s urban economy appears connected to discretionary activity:
hospitality
tourism
leisure
office administration
non-essential retail
entertainment
advertising
consumer finance
If discretionary spending weakens, associated travel and freight movement also weaken.
This is where localism becomes increasingly important.
Localism reduces dependence upon large-scale transport systems because more activity occurs nearer to where people live.
Instead of:
national food chains
long-distance commuting
centralised production
massive warehousing systems
a localist economy increasingly depends upon:
local food production
nearby employment
local repair
smaller distribution systems
shorter supply chains
walking and cycling where possible
essential rather than discretionary movement
In this context, localism is not simply an environmental preference or political theory.
It may become an economic adaptation to rising transport costs and declining surplus energy.
The implications are profound.
Large supermarkets depend upon huge distribution networks and constant freight movement. Urban office economies depend upon mass commuting. Online retail depends upon extensive delivery systems. Tourism depends upon discretionary travel affordability.
If transport costs continue rising while real incomes weaken, these systems become progressively more fragile.
communities become less dependent upon national logistics
local work reduces commuting demand
repair and reuse reduce freight demand
smaller local economies require less movement of goods overall
This does not mean the complete disappearance of national transport systems.
Britain will still require:
rail freight corridors
essential road freight
ports
strategic railways
specialist distribution systems
national infrastructure
But the balance may gradually shift.
The industrial growth economy assumed ever-increasing movement: more goods, more travel, more commuting, more consumption.
A shrinking economy increasingly encourages the reverse:
localisation
simplification
shorter supply chains
reduced discretionary movement
greater emphasis upon essentials
Under those conditions, localism may evolve not through ideology alone, but because it increasingly fits the economic realities of a society facing rising energy costs and declining transport affordability.
For newcomers to this blog, I must explain that I follow Dr Tim Morgan’s SEEDS analysis.
Dr Morgan is the former head of research at Tullett Prebon, a major British financial brokerage.
Morgan uses the acronym SEEDS to mean the “Surplus Energy Economics Data System”. It is the economic model he developed to analyse the economy as an energy system rather than as a purely financial one.
The central idea behind SEEDS is:
The economy is not really driven by money. It is driven by surplus energy.
Money is only a claim on what the real economy can produce.
Morgan argues that orthodox economics gets this backwards because it assumes growth can continue indefinitely if central banks and governments manage money correctly. SEEDS says this is impossible if the surplus energy available to society is shrinking.
The model revolves around several key concepts.
The economy is energy
SEEDS starts from the idea that every good and service requires energy to exist:
food,
transport,
buildings,
hospitals,
computers,
the internet,
financial services,
everything.
Without energy, there is no economy.
Surplus energy matters, not total energy
This is probably the most important part of the theory.
Morgan says that what matters is not how much gross energy exists, but how much is left after obtaining the energy itself.
For example:
oil wells,
pipelines,
refineries,
wind turbines,
batteries,
electricity grids,
All require energy to build and operate.
So society must “use energy to get energy”.
The remaining amount is called surplus energy.
ECoE – Energy Cost of Energy
Morgan measures this using a metric called ECoE.
ECoE is the percentage of energy consumed to obtain usable energy.
He argues that:
In earlier industrial times, ECoE was very low,
cheap coal and oil created enormous surplus energy,
This enabled industrial growth, welfare states, consumerism, and financial expansion.
But now:
resources are harder to extract,
systems are more complex,
renewables require extensive infrastructure,
therefore ECoE rises.
As ECoE rises, surplus energy shrinks.
Prosperity is shrinking even if GDP rises
SEEDS distinguishes between:
financial growth, and
real prosperity.
Morgan argues governments disguise declining prosperity through:
debt,
money creation,
asset inflation,
low interest rates,
expanding credit.
So GDP may still rise while real living standards stagnate or decline.
Essentials squeeze discretionary spending
One of Morgan’s major conclusions is that as surplus energy declines:
essentials become more expensive,
households spend more on food, energy, housing and taxation,
discretionary sectors shrink.
SEEDS therefore predicts long-term pressure on:
tourism,
hospitality,
leisure,
luxury retail,
non-essential transport,
much office employment,
and many financial activities.
Meanwhile, essentials become dominant again.
Finance becomes detached from reality
Morgan argues modern finance increasingly represents claims on future prosperity that may never exist.
So:
debts expand,
pensions become difficult,
asset prices become unrealistic,
governments borrow to preserve living standards,
but the underlying energy base is weakening.
Eventually, he believes, the financial system must “de-financialise” and reconnect with physical reality.
A recent article in The Telegraph raises a profound question about the future of society. If artificial intelligence removes large numbers of white-collar jobs, what happens to the tax system that depends upon human employment, and what happens to the millions of people who no longer fit into the high-technology economy?
The issue is no longer theoretical. Technology firms, economists and even AI company executives are now openly discussing the possibility of mass redundancy amongst professional and office workers. Predictions range from the disappearance of entry-level jobs to severe reductions in software, administration, finance and design work.
The modern state is heavily dependent upon income tax and national insurance contributions from human labour. If AI systems increasingly perform the work once carried out by accountants, clerks, designers, legal assistants, administrators and software engineers, then the tax base itself begins to erode. This concern is now being openly acknowledged by OpenAI and others.
The political response so far has largely centred on ideas such as taxing AI companies, taxing data centres, introducing universal basic income, or retraining workers for an AI economy. But these responses still assume that the industrial-consumer system itself will continue largely unchanged. That assumption may prove false.
If AI concentrates wealth and productive power into a relatively small number of corporations and highly skilled technical elites, then a growing proportion of the population may simply become economically marginal to the formal system. The danger is not merely unemployment. It is the gradual separation of society into two economies.
The first economy would be the AI economy. Highly automated, urban, capital-intensive and dependent upon large concentrations of computing power, electricity, finance and advanced infrastructure. A relatively small number of people may prosper greatly within it.
The second economy may increasingly become a human economy. People excluded from the high-productivity AI system may drift toward forms of life where human labour still retains value because it meets immediate local needs rather than competing with global machine intelligence.
This is where rural localism may emerge, not as an ideological movement, but as a practical adaptation.
In such localities, people may no longer expect secure careers within national corporations. Instead, value may come from food production, repair work, woodland management, small-scale construction, care of older people, local transport, water systems, energy generation and simple manufacturing. Many of these activities are difficult to automate economically at small scale, especially in dispersed rural areas.
Paradoxically, those who do not benefit from AI may rediscover forms of resilience that highly automated urban populations lack.
A rural locality producing some of its own food, fuel and essential goods may prove more stable than a city population dependent upon welfare transfers funded by increasingly fragile corporate taxation. The ability to grow food, repair tools, manage woodland, harvest water and maintain simple infrastructure may become economically important once again.
There is also the question of housing. If large sections of office employment disappear, demand for expensive urban property may weaken significantly. Already there are warnings that AI-related job losses could destabilise housing markets. This may gradually push some people away from metropolitan centres toward cheaper rural areas where survival costs can be lowered through partial self-reliance.
However, rural localism will not be easy. Land prices remain extremely high. Planning systems still assume economic growth and commuter lifestyles. Rural infrastructure has been weakened over decades. Villages often lack workshops, smallholdings, local rail services, markets and affordable housing. Most importantly, modern populations have lost many practical skills.
Nevertheless, if AI continues replacing cognitive and administrative labour while energy and living costs continue rising, the logic of localism may strengthen naturally.
The future may therefore divide into two worlds existing side by side. One world dominated by AI, automation and concentrated wealth. The other based increasingly upon locality, practical labour, shared resources and reduced dependence upon the formal money economy.
In that sense, rural localism may become less a lifestyle choice and more a refuge for those left outside the AI system.
This piece was written by ChatGPT, prompted by Barry.
A growing number of UK businesses are either collapsing, closing branches, or entering administration. When the pattern is examined carefully, most are connected with discretionary spending rather than essentials.
Recent examples include the restaurant chain Spaghetti House, which closed all of its branches and made over 100 staff redundant.
Retailers are also under pressure. Shoe Zone has closed stores after losses increased sharply. The former WH Smith high street chain, now renamed TG Jones, is facing possible insolvency and major store closures.
Hospitality is one of the worst affected sectors. Government and industry data show thousands of pubs, restaurants, hotels and food-service businesses becoming insolvent.
The pattern is revealing.
Most of the sectors under greatest strain are not directly connected with survival needs. They are businesses that depend upon surplus income – eating out, leisure shopping, fashion purchases, travel, hospitality, entertainment and tourism.
Consumer spending figures support this. UK households are cutting back mainly on non-essential expenditure, particularly travel and leisure.
This is highly significant in relation to the shrinking economy.
As energy costs rise through the whole economy, and as governments, businesses and households all struggle with debt and inflation, people naturally retreat towards essentials. Food, heating, housing and basic transport take priority. Discretionary spending declines first because it depends upon surplus prosperity.
The industrial-consumerist era created vast layers of discretionary activity. Much of modern employment has depended upon people having enough surplus income to spend on optional goods and services. Once that surplus begins to disappear, these sectors become unstable.
The insolvency figures increasingly reflect this reality. Retail, hospitality and leisure businesses are consistently among the most vulnerable sectors.
From the viewpoint of localism, this may represent the early stages of a long transition away from a consumption-driven economy toward a more essentials-based economy.
In a localist future, economic activity becomes increasingly focused upon necessities close to home – food growing, maintenance, care, repair work, local materials, practical crafts, shared facilities and small-scale production. These are activities rooted in survival and locality rather than discretionary consumption.
The present wave of closures may therefore not simply be a temporary recessionary cycle. It may instead be showing which parts of the industrial economy are least sustainable when surplus energy and surplus spending begin to decline.
That does not mean all hospitality, retail or leisure disappears. Some will survive locally at smaller scale, especially where closely tied to community life. But the era of mass discretionary consumerism appears increasingly fragile.
The economy may gradually divide into two parts:
essential activities that remain viable because people must have them
discretionary activities that contract because people can no longer afford large amounts of optional consumption
This distinction may become one of the defining economic realities of the coming decades.
The article “Supermarket Slowdown” on Consciousness of Sheep points to an important change taking place within the industrial consumer economy. The slowdown in supermarket sales is not simply a temporary fluctuation caused by weather or changing fashions. It is part of a broader pattern of weakening consumer demand, rising costs, and the gradual contraction of discretionary spending.
Recent retail figures support this picture. UK supermarket sales and wider retail activity have weakened during 2026, while inflation in groceries remains elevated and consumer confidence has fallen sharply. Rising energy prices, fertiliser costs and international instability are feeding directly into food prices and supply chains.
The article argues that supermarkets were built during a period of cheap energy, abundant transport and increasing prosperity. Their success depended upon long supply chains, huge distribution systems, refrigerated transport, industrial agriculture and consumers with enough disposable income to purchase large quantities of packaged and processed goods. As energy and transport costs rise, and as household budgets come under increasing pressure, this model begins to weaken.
This has major implications for localism.
One implication is that food systems may gradually relocalise, not because governments force people to do so, but because industrial systems become increasingly expensive and less reliable. Supermarkets depend upon national and international logistics networks. Local food systems depend more upon nearby land, local labour, shorter transport routes and direct relationships between producers and consumers.
As industrial systems weaken, local alternatives become more practical and attractive. Local markets, small growers, community-supported agriculture, local butchers, bakers and food processors may slowly recover importance. In many places this may begin informally – neighbours sharing produce, small roadside sales, local delivery networks, cooperative growing projects and part-time food production.
The slowdown also highlights the distinction between essential and discretionary activity. During economic contraction, households tend to prioritise necessities. Large amounts of industrial consumer activity depend upon surplus income. When that surplus declines, sectors linked to convenience, novelty and consumerism weaken first. Food itself remains essential, but the highly industrialised and heavily processed supermarket model becomes increasingly vulnerable.
Another implication concerns employment. Supermarkets replaced many smaller local shops and local supply chains during the growth era. But local economies are generally more labour-intensive. A relocalised food economy may provide increasing opportunities for part-time, self-employed and family-based work closer to home. This becomes increasingly important as formal industrial employment contracts.
The article also indirectly raises the issue of resilience. Long supply chains are efficient during periods of stability, but fragile during disruption. Local systems may be less “efficient” in industrial economic terms, but they are often more adaptable and resilient. A locality producing part of its own food is less dependent upon distant systems which may become unreliable due to energy shortages, transport disruption or financial instability.
In localist terms, the supermarket slowdown may therefore represent something much larger than a retail problem. It may be an early sign of the gradual transition from a high-energy, centralised consumer economy toward a lower-energy, more localised society.
This transition is unlikely to happen suddenly or evenly. Supermarkets will remain important for many years. But their slowing growth may indicate that the industrial expansionary phase has reached its limits. As that happens, local economies based upon essentials, particularly food, may slowly re-emerge as the practical foundation of everyday life.
The United Kingdom increasingly appears to be trapped in confusion. Governments announce new policies almost weekly, yet few problems seem to be improving. Welfare spending rises relentlessly, public debt expands, housing shortages worsen, immigration continues at historically high levels, and public services struggle under increasing pressure.
At the same time, governments appear unable to decide what direction the country should take. One minister speaks of growth, another of austerity, another of borrowing, and another of industrial strategy. Yet underneath all these debates lies a deeper reality that few politicians are willing to discuss openly.
The reality is that the industrial-consumerist economy is slowly shrinking.
The modern economy was built during a period of abundant, cheap energy and continual expansion. Governments, businesses and individuals all assumed that future growth would always pay for present borrowing and the expansion of systems of welfare, administration and consumption.
But the surplus energy that supported this expansion is gradually declining. As a result, many forms of discretionary economic activity become harder to sustain. Large parts of the economy increasingly depend on debt, subsidies, and financial manipulation rather than on genuine productive growth.
Governments cannot openly admit this because the entire political structure depends upon belief in future expansion. So instead they continue borrowing, taxing and expanding welfare systems in an attempt to preserve the old order.
This creates a vicious circle.
Higher welfare costs require more taxation and borrowing. More borrowing increases the national debt. Weakening economic productivity, in turn, encourages governments to support high levels of immigration to maintain the labour force, tax base and consumer spending.
Also, mass immigration increasingly strains housing, healthcare, schools, infrastructure, and social cohesion.
Much of modern immigration is linked directly or indirectly to the national welfare state and the wider consumer economy.
Britain offers not only employment opportunities, but also access to housing support, healthcare, education, welfare payments and numerous forms of state assistance. Even when immigrants work hard and contribute positively, the overall system remains a powerful attraction because it offers security from a large, centralised state.
This situation belongs to the era of growth economics.
As the economy shrinks, the central state’s ability to maintain such vast national support systems steadily weakens. Governments may continue trying to preserve them by borrowing, but eventually, the financial burden becomes too great.
At this point, society itself begins evolving from the grassroots upward.
This is an aspect of the beginning of localism.
Localism is not primarily a political ideology. It is the natural social and economic adjustment that occurs when large centralised systems become too expensive and too inefficient to maintain. Functions slowly move away from distant bureaucracies and back toward families, localities and practical local cooperation.
In such a society, many forms of support increasingly arise from local participation rather than automatic national entitlement.
People contribute directly to local life through food production, repairs, care, maintenance, small businesses, practical skills, and mutual support networks. Economic activity becomes more local, informal, and rooted in local relationships.
Under these conditions, immigration changes naturally.
Large-scale immigration becomes less attractive as the national welfare structure that once served as a magnet gradually weakens. Support systems increasingly depend upon local relationships, local contribution and long-term participation within the locality itself.
Benefits provided through local cooperation are not easily transferable to newly arrived outsiders who have no established place within the local social structure.
This is not necessarily hostility toward immigrants. It is simply the natural behaviour of local economies.
Families and localities tend to support those who are already part of the community and who contribute directly to its well-being. In a localist society, support is based less on abstract national entitlement and more on trust, familiarity, reciprocity, and shared participation.
As a result, excessive immigration declines naturally without requiring constant political conflict.
The same process may gradually affect welfare dependency more generally.
Under the present system, millions of people depend upon distant state structures for survival because productive local economic roles have disappeared. But as local economies redevelop from the grass-roots, people increasingly regain practical functions within their own localities.
Food growing, care of older people, repair work, local transport, maintenance, childcare, cooking, preserving food, and many other essential activities are slowly regaining economic importance.
Children with difficulties may also benefit from this transition. Modern consumer society often requires both parents to work full-time simply to maintain household finances. Yet many children struggle emotionally and behaviourally within this arrangement.
As the shrinking economy reduces formal employment opportunities, particularly within discretionary sectors, society may gradually reorganise around different priorities. More parents, especially mothers, may once again spend more time at home because the economic structure itself has changed.
The value of parenting, care and local involvement rises again.
This evolution may eventually reduce many social problems more effectively than government programmes.
Government debt may also begin stabilising naturally. As society becomes structurally simpler and more localised, the enormous administrative costs of maintaining highly centralised systems may slowly decline. Local solutions are often less expensive because they depend more upon direct relationships and practical cooperation than upon layers of bureaucracy.
None of this implies an easy transition.
There may be periods of instability, financial crises, political fragmentation and falling living standards in some sectors. Governments will continue trying to restore economic growth because the present political system has few alternatives.
But beneath the surface, a different society is already emerging.
The future may place greater value upon stability rather than expansion, quality rather than quantity, locality rather than centralisation, and participation rather than dependency.
Many of today’s apparently unsolvable problems will be resolved not through larger government systems, but through the gradual natural evolution of localism.
The industrial and consumerist era was built upon one overriding condition – abundant surplus energy.
Coal, oil and gas provided such vast quantities of concentrated energy that societies could undertake a wide range of activities far beyond simple survival.
Once food, shelter, transport and basic industry had been secured, enormous additional sectors could emerge. Tourism, advertising, financial services, mass commuting, global retailing, endless entertainment, international supply chains, consumer electronics, consultancy industries, luxury goods and countless other discretionary activities all became possible because the energy surplus was so large.
This surplus energy shaped not only the economy but also the psychology of modern civilisation.
Industrial society increasingly came to believe that human progress consisted of quantitative expansion.
More production meant success.
More consumption meant prosperity.
More movement meant development.
More choice meant freedom.
More wealth meant happiness.
And because industrial civilisation was fundamentally expansionary, it increasingly measured itself in numerical terms. Growth required measurement. Expanding systems could only be coordinated through statistics, accounts, targets and calculations.
Thus, modern society became a gigantic measuring machine.
Governments measure GDP growth.
Businesses measured productivity.
Banks measured financial returns.
Transport planners measured traffic flows.
Retailers measured sales volumes.
Schools measured test scores.
Hospitals measured targets.
Individuals measured income, house values, pensions and possessions.
The modern world increasingly trusts numbers more than lived experience.
At the centre of this system stood Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. GDP measures the total monetary value of goods and services produced within a country during a given period. If more money flows through the economy, GDP rises. If less money flows, GDP falls.
But GDP does not really measure well-being.
It measures activity.
Indeed, many activities which increase GDP may actually reduce human happiness and social stability.
If families stop caring for elderly relatives and instead pay for commercial care, providers.
If people stop repairing possessions and constantly replace them, GDP rises.
If communities become fragmented and individuals purchase more services separately, GDP rises.
If stress, anxiety and overwork generate larger pharmaceutical industries, counselling industries and entertainment industries, GDP rises.
The industrial system, therefore, rewarded quantity over quality.
The assumption was that if measurable activity increased continuously, society itself must be improving.
But this increasingly produced a strange contradiction.
Material quantity expanded enormously while unhappiness, anxiety, loneliness and social fragmentation often expanded alongside it.
People possessed more goods yet frequently felt less secure.
Consumer choice expanded while communities weakened.
Economic growth increased while trust declined.
The industrial era became extraordinarily successful at producing quantity but much less successful at producing contentment.
This occurred because industrial consumerism encouraged perpetual dissatisfaction. Economies dependent on continuous consumption require people to never feel they have enough. Advertising, fashion, status competition and planned obsolescence all depended upon maintaining permanent dissatisfaction.
A happy, contented and materially sufficient population is economically problematic for a growth-based system because contented people consume less.
Thus, industrial civilisation subtly encouraged endless striving rather than sufficiency.
But this entire system depended upon abundant surplus energy.
The critical issue is not simply the price of energy, but the rising cost of obtaining it.
In the early industrial period, huge quantities of surplus energy could be extracted relatively easily. A small amount of energy invested in oil extraction yielded enormous returns. The surplus remaining after extraction powered the rest of civilisation.
But over time, the easiest resources are depleted first. Oil fields become harder to exploit. Minerals require more processing. Infrastructure becomes more complex. More energy must be invested simply to maintain the energy system itself.
As a result, the net surplus energy available to society gradually declines.
Industrial civilisation can mask this process for some time through debt, financial expansion and technological efficiencies. But eventually the effects spread throughout the economy.
And they appear first in discretionary activities.
This is crucial because a large proportion of modern economic activity is discretionary rather than essential. A vast number of jobs and industries exist only because abundant surplus energy once allowed them to emerge.
As surplus energy declines, societies naturally begin reducing these discretionary activities.
People eat out less.
They travel less.
They postpone purchases.
They repair rather than replace.
They reduce luxury spending.
Businesses contract.
Hospitality weakens.
Retail declines.
Large office sectors shrink.
Long-distance commuting becomes less attractive.
Some estimates suggest that perhaps nearly half of modern economic activity may ultimately prove to be discretionary – dependent not upon necessity, but upon temporary conditions of high surplus energy.
As these sectors weaken, formal employment also weakens.
This is not merely a temporary recession. It is part of an evolutionary adjustment.
Industrial society required millions of specialised formal jobs because large-scale systems required central coordination. But as discretionary sectors decline, increasing numbers of people have to move towards informal, practical and localised forms of activity.
Some grow food.
Some repair equipment.
Some provide local services.
Some care informally for others.
Some combine several small activities together.
The formal industrial labour market slowly fragments.
Governments often interpret this as economic failure because they continue to view society through industrial metrics such as GDP, tax receipts, and employment statistics.
But underneath the measurements, another process may be occurring.
People begin adapting individually to a world with less surplus energy.
And this adaptation naturally encourages localism.
The important point is that localism is not primarily an ideology imposed politically from above. It is an evolutionary response to changing material conditions.
As large systems become more expensive, fragile and impersonal, individuals increasingly turn towards what feels immediate, practical and dependable.
They rediscover locality.
They value nearby food production.
They reduce dependency upon long supply chains.
They rely more upon personal relationships.
They seek practical security rather than abstract financial growth.
And most importantly, the emphasis slowly shifts from quantity towards quality.
This is the profound civilisational change taking place underneath the economic statistics.
Industrial civilisation assumed that more quantity created more happiness.
Localism will discover that quality creates happiness.
A locality with fewer possessions but stronger trust may feel happier than an affluent but fragmented suburb.
A slower life with secure relationships may produce greater well-being than a high-income life dominated by stress and commuting.
Repairing and maintaining valued possessions may create greater satisfaction than endless replacement.
Knowing neighbours may matter more than access to vast anonymous systems.
Fresh local food may provide more contentment than unlimited supermarket choice.
Security, familiarity and usefulness begin replacing accumulation as measures of success.
Importantly, many of these improvements barely register in industrial statistics.
A neighbour helping another neighbour creates little GDP.
Home-grown vegetables barely appear economically.
Shared tools reduce measurable consumption.
Repairing old equipment lowers retail sales.
Informal care reduces service-sector activity.
From the viewpoint of industrial economics, these may appear negative because the measurable quantity of transactions declines.
Yet qualitatively, life may improve.
This is why the transition towards localism is so difficult for industrial institutions to recognise. Governments and economists continue to observe declines in measurable indicators while often failing to recognise the emergence of qualitative resilience beneath the surface.
Indeed, localism may initially appear economically poorer but ultimately become socially richer.
GDP may decline while trust increases.
Retail spending may fall while practical competence grows.
Formal employment may weaken while informal usefulness expands.
Consumer choice may narrow while life satisfaction improves.
The industrial era measured society because it believed reality could be understood numerically.
The emerging localist era may increasingly understand reality through lived experience.
People may gradually judge society less by how much it possesses and more by how well it lives.
And the driving force behind this transition is not primarily political theory, but the decline of surplus energy available to support the enormous quantitative complexity of industrial consumer civilisation. As quantity becomes harder to sustain, society naturally discovers quality
The political fragmentation now appearing in cities such as Birmingham may look at first sight like simple chaos. The newspapers describe councils becoming “ungovernable”, with no party able to command a majority, old loyalties collapsing, and independents, Greens, Reform candidates and local issue groups all competing for influence. Yet beneath the confusion there may be something deeper happening. It may represent the first stages of a distinctly metropolitan form of localism.
For over a century British politics has depended on large national parties organising opinion into broad ideological camps – Labour, Conservative, Liberal, left and right. That structure made sense during the industrial age, when large national systems dominated life. Industry, finance, transport, energy, welfare and media were all becoming larger and more centralised. Political life naturally followed the same pattern.
But modern Britain no longer functions in that coherent way. The economy is fragmenting. Cultures differ sharply from place to place. Cities and towns experience completely different realities. National promises increasingly fail because conditions vary too widely across the country for a single policy to work everywhere.
The result is political disintegration.
What happened in Birmingham illustrates this clearly. Labour lost control after years of financial crisis, service cuts and administrative failure. But the replacement was not a single alternative party. Instead, the electorate scattered in many directions at once – Reform, Greens, independents, community campaigns and issue-based candidates.
Conventional commentators see this as dysfunction. They fear endless coalitions, paralysis and instability. In terms of traditional centralised politics, they are probably correct. These councils may indeed become extremely difficult to manage using the old top-down methods.
But localism would see something different.
What if this fragmentation is not failure, but the breakdown of an obsolete political structure?
The older metropolitan model assumed that giant cities could be administered almost like corporations. The central government allocated money. National parties imposed priorities. Councils became delivery mechanisms for centrally designed programmes. Local people increasingly lost meaningful influence over their own surroundings.
Now that system is weakening.
As trust in national politics declines, voters are beginning to revert to locality-based concerns. They vote not primarily for ideology, but for immediate lived experience – housing, refuse collection, neighbourhood decline, immigration pressures, transport failures, local identity, or dissatisfaction with distant bureaucracies.
That is highly significant.
The emergence of independents and highly localised political groups suggests that many people are no longer psychologically organised around national political identities. Instead they are reorganising around place.
This is one of the foundations of localism.
However, metropolitan localism differs from the rural or small-town version.
In smaller localities, localism often grows naturally from personal relationships, direct knowledge, and long familiarity between people. In giant urban areas, intimacy scarcely exists. The metropolitan version is therefore likely to emerge through clusters of neighbourhood identities within the larger city fabric.
One can already see hints of this.
Different wards within Birmingham now behave politically almost as separate territories, each with its own concerns, cultures and loyalties. Similar patterns are appearing elsewhere. Oldham, for example, now contains a fragmented council with multiple competing blocs rooted in very specific local and cultural identities.
This may look alarming to those who still assume Britain must be governed through stable national party machines. But localism suggests that large industrial-era political structures are simply losing coherence because the society underneath them is changing.
Indeed, there is a strong possibility that metropolitan localism emerges precisely because large cities have become unmanageable under centralised assumptions.
The bigger and more financially strained the systems become, the harder it is for any single authority to satisfy everyone. Birmingham’s bankruptcy was not merely an administrative accident. It may have been a sign that the scale itself has become dysfunctional.
As financial growth weakens nationally, this process may accelerate.
The central government will gradually lose the ability to subsidise failing urban systems indefinitely. Metropolitan authorities may then be forced to devolve practical responsibilities downward into smaller neighbourhood units, informal community structures, and highly localised arrangements simply because there is no other workable option.
In other words, localism may first appear not as an idealistic movement, but as an adaptive necessity.
Ironically, the apparent “ungovernability” may itself be part of the transition.
The old political order depended on central authority to maintain coherence across enormous populations. Once that coherence weakens, politics becomes more fluid, local, fragmented and place-specific. From the viewpoint of the old system this appears chaotic. From the viewpoint of localism it may represent political life returning closer to the realities of everyday existence.
The important point is that this fragmentation is unlikely to be temporary.
The old left-right framework is weakening across Britain because many of today’s problems are no longer fundamentally ideological. They are structural. Housing shortages, energy constraints, financial overstretch, deteriorating infrastructure and declining public trust cannot easily be solved through conventional party politics.
As these pressures deepen, people increasingly turn toward what is near, tangible and immediate – locality, neighbourhood, family, community and practical survival.
That is why the events in Birmingham may matter far beyond Birmingham itself.
They may represent an early glimpse of how metropolitan Britain gradually reorganises itself during the long transition away from the centralised growth-based age.
The BBC report on Sir John Curtice’s analysis points to a clear conclusion: UK politics is no longer structured around a stable two-party system. Instead, voting behaviour is fragmenting across several parties, with no single political force able to command broad and lasting support. Sir John Curtice has for some time argued that British politics has become more volatile and multi-directional, with traditional anchors such as class voting weakening and being replaced by a mixture of trust, identity, place, and issue-specific loyalties.
What is emerging is not a temporary disruption but a structural change. Elections are now shaped by a wider spread of parties, each with concentrated support in different kinds of places. The Conservatives and Labour still matter, but they no longer define the political landscape in the way they once did. Smaller parties are no longer peripheral. They are now active components of how power is distributed and contested.
This matters because political systems tend to reflect the economic and social systems beneath them. Fragmentation in politics is usually not an isolated phenomenon. It signals that the underlying society is no longer moving in a single direction with shared assumptions. Instead, it is becoming more differentiated, locally varied, and less centrally coordinated.
Seen through the lens of a shrinking economy and the gradual transition away from growth dependency, this fragmentation begins to look less like instability and more like adaptation.
A growth-based political system depends on a shared belief that national government can manage expansion, distribute benefits, and smooth out tensions through rising output. When that assumption weakens, political unity becomes harder to maintain. Competing priorities become more visible, and no single narrative is able to hold everything together.
If economic growth slows structurally, as energy, resource, and demographic constraints tighten, then national politics inevitably becomes less about managing expansion and more about managing constraint. That shift tends to produce disagreement, not consensus. Different places experience constraints differently. Some adapt through services, some through informal work, some through reliance on local networks, and others through continued dependence on formal state systems that are themselves under pressure.
In that context, the fragmentation identified by Curtice is not just electoral behaviour. It is a surface expression of a deeper divergence in how different localities are already functioning.
This is where localism becomes less of an ideology and more of a practical outcome.
As national political systems struggle to maintain coherence across a diverse and increasingly uneven country, decision-making naturally begins to drift downwards. Not necessarily through formal constitutional reform, but through gradual necessity. Local authorities, community networks, voluntary groups, and informal arrangements begin to carry more weight simply because central systems cannot respond uniformly to varied conditions.
In a sense, political fragmentation and economic constraint reinforce each other. As the ability of national government to direct outcomes weakens, politics becomes more localised. As politics becomes more localised, expectations of uniform national solutions weaken further.
This also links to the emergence of informal systems within the economy. In a shrinking or non-growing context, not all activity can be captured or managed through formal structures such as taxation, corporate employment, or centralised public services. Instead, a growing proportion of daily life tends to be supported through informal arrangements: mutual aid, home-based work, local exchange, and practical cooperation between households.
These systems are often dismissed in formal analysis, but they become increasingly important when the formal economy is under pressure. They also align closely with localism, because they operate at a scale defined by proximity, trust, and direct knowledge of place.
Taken together, the political and economic trends suggest a consistent direction of travel.
The fragmentation of party politics is not simply a breakdown of the old order. It is part of a wider transition in which national systems lose their capacity to organise life in a uniform way. In their place, more locally grounded arrangements emerge, both in governance and in economic activity.
From this perspective, the UK is not moving towards disorder, but towards a different kind of order. One in which coherence is no longer imposed from the centre, but built from the accumulation of local responses to shared constraints.
Localism, then, is not a policy choice waiting to be adopted. It is increasingly the way a constrained and fragmented system resolves itself in practice.
For more than a century, politics in the United Kingdom has largely been organised around the idea of left and right.
The left was associated with labour, public ownership, welfare and collective provision. The right was associated with markets, private enterprise, individualism and national tradition. Governments changed, policies altered, but the overall industrial structure of society remained intact. Economic growth was assumed. Expanding energy supplies were assumed. Expanding tax revenues were assumed. The state, corporations and financial systems all depended upon continual expansion.
Today that framework is beginning to fracture.
The fragmentation of UK political parties is often presented as a crisis, but it may actually be part of a deeper historical transition. The decline of loyalty to the major parties is not merely the result of bad leadership, media influence or unpopular policies. It reflects the gradual breakdown of the industrial growth model itself.
Increasing numbers of people no longer feel represented by either the traditional left or the traditional right because neither side can solve the underlying problems. Rising housing costs, failing infrastructure, NHS pressures, declining affordability, insecure employment, failing town centres, loneliness and the erosion of local identity are not problems that can easily be solved through the old arguments about tax rates or ownership structures. Both sides remain trapped within the assumptions of economic growth, large-scale administration and centralised systems.
As growth slows, politics naturally fragments.
Different groups begin responding to immediate local pressures rather than broad national ideologies. Rural areas experience different realities from cities. Coastal towns face different pressures from affluent commuter belts. Former industrial towns experience different problems from university cities. The industrial political system struggles to hold these very different experiences together under a single national narrative.
This helps explain why political loyalties have become unstable. Voters move between parties rapidly. Smaller parties emerge. Independent candidates gain support. Protest voting increases. Political debates become confused and contradictory because society itself is entering a transitional period in which the old assumptions no longer fit reality.
In many ways, the disappearance of a clear left-right divide is understandable. Both left and right emerged during the age of industrial expansion. Both assumed that large national systems could continually improve living standards through economic growth. But if growth becomes increasingly difficult because of energy constraints, resource depletion, environmental pressures and debt saturation, then the old industrial political categories begin losing meaning.
The practical realities of daily life start becoming more important than ideology.
People begin focusing on questions such as:
Can we still afford to heat our homes?
Where will food come from?
Can local services survive?
How far must people travel for work, shopping or healthcare?
How resilient is the electricity supply?
Can families remain within their own locality?
What happens if national systems become unreliable or unaffordable?
These are not fundamentally left-wing or right-wing questions. They are questions about survival, resilience and locality.
As this transition deepens, political organisation may gradually evolve away from mass national parties towards more fragmented, localised and practical forms of governance. Local alliances, independent groups, community organisations and informal networks may become increasingly important. Politics may become less ideological and more concerned with maintaining the practical functioning of everyday life within particular localities.
This would represent a profound historical shift.
Industrial society required centralisation. Large factories, national transport systems, centralised electricity grids, mass retailing and national bureaucracies all encouraged large national political structures. But as the industrial system weakens under financial and physical strain, political structures may begin decentralising alongside the economy itself.
In this sense, political fragmentation may not be a temporary disturbance. It may be an early sign of the gradual evolution towards localism.
Under localism, decision-making increasingly moves closer to where people actually live. Informal systems become more important. Communities become less dependent upon distant national institutions and more dependent upon local relationships, local production and local adaptation. Politics becomes more practical and less ideological because local people are dealing directly with real constraints rather than abstract theories.
The future local political landscape may therefore look very different from the twentieth century model. Instead of a few dominant national parties competing for control of a highly centralised state, there may be a patchwork of local arrangements reflecting differing local circumstances.
Some localities may prioritise food production. Others may focus on energy resilience, local transport, housing adaptation or woodland management. Policies may increasingly vary from one locality to another because physical conditions, resources and social structures vary enormously across the country.
This does not necessarily mean the disappearance of national government. The state will still exist. But its role may gradually shift away from managing endless growth towards holding together a society adapting to contraction.
The political arguments of the future may therefore no longer revolve around left versus right, but around questions such as:
How much should remain centralised?
What functions can realistically remain national?
How can localities become more self-supporting?
How should scarce resources be allocated?
How can social stability be maintained during contraction?
What level of complexity can society still afford to maintain?
These are fundamentally different political questions from those that shaped the industrial age.
The present confusion within UK politics may therefore not simply be political failure. It may reflect the beginning of a much larger civilisational transition in which the assumptions of industrial growth, mass centralisation and permanent expansion are slowly giving way to a more local, decentralised and constrained society.
The fragmentation of political parties is not necessarily the end of political order. It may be the beginning of a different kind of order altogether.
Britain is living through a period of profound muddle. Institutions continue to behave as though economic expansion, rising consumption and increasing public expenditure will soon return, yet everyday experience increasingly suggests otherwise. The country is caught between an old expectation of endless growth and a new reality of limits, stagnation and decline.
At the centre of the confusion lies a deeper issue that is still rarely acknowledged openly. Modern financial capitalism itself depends upon continuing economic growth. Debt, pensions, investment markets, property values, government borrowing and business expansion all assume that tomorrow’s economy will be larger than today’s. When growth slows permanently, the entire financial structure begins to lose stability.
For decades Britain has attempted to maintain the appearance of prosperity through borrowing, asset inflation and financial expansion, even while much of the productive economy weakened. Rising house prices created the illusion of wealth. Expanding credit maintained consumer spending. Governments relied increasingly on debt. Pension systems depended upon rising investment values. Yet all these mechanisms ultimately require continuing growth underneath them.
If growth no longer returns, financial capitalism as it has existed since the late twentieth century gradually ceases to function properly.
This can already be seen across the country.
The housing system is in confusion. Governments promise hundreds of thousands of new homes while construction costs rise, planning systems become more complex, infrastructure becomes harder to fund, and younger people find ownership increasingly unattainable. Developers depend upon debt, high land values and continuing consumer confidence. Mortgage systems themselves rely upon assumptions of stable long-term growth and rising incomes. Yet many towns already contain empty shops, underused offices and ageing housing stock requiring major repair. The assumption that continuous expansion will solve the housing crisis no longer fits reality.
Transport is equally confused. Roads remain congested, rail systems require enormous subsidy, local bus services decline outside major cities, and large infrastructure projects become steadily more expensive. Yet many journeys are becoming unaffordable for households facing rising costs. The old assumption that mobility would endlessly increase is weakening. Remote working, online shopping and demographic ageing are quietly reducing the demand for daily long-distance travel.
The NHS sits in perhaps the greatest muddle of all. It was designed during an era when economic growth could steadily finance rising demand. Today it faces an ageing population, chronic illness, staffing shortages and increasing treatment costs. Governments still speak as though greater efficiency alone will solve the problem, yet the deeper issue is structural. Modern medicine has become enormously complex and expensive, while the tax base required to support it struggles to grow. The system attempts to maintain industrial-era expectations in a post-growth environment.
Education is similarly uncertain. Universities expanded on the assumption that ever-growing numbers of graduates would enter an expanding professional economy. Instead, many young people leave with debt and uncertain employment prospects. Schools continue preparing pupils for a labour market that increasingly no longer exists in its previous form. The expectation that every generation will become steadily more prosperous than the last is quietly weakening.
Local government is under severe strain. Councils struggle to maintain roads, libraries, parks, social care and waste collection while central funding weakens. Yet the formal structures of administration remain based on assumptions of continuing expansion. Authorities are increasingly trapped between rising demand and shrinking resources.
Business itself is deeply uncertain. Many firms survive on debt, low wages and fragile consumer spending. Retailers face declining footfall. Restaurants and pubs close despite full high streets on weekends. Farmers face rising fuel, fertiliser and machinery costs while supermarkets drive prices downward. Smaller firms struggle with regulation designed for a larger and more prosperous economy.
Families feel the muddle directly. Household budgets are stretched by housing, energy, food and transport costs. Younger adults postpone having children or remain living with parents longer than previous generations. Elderly people increasingly support younger relatives financially. Many households quietly reduce discretionary spending, holidays, entertainment and travel while trying to maintain appearances of normality.
Politically, the muddle appears in the constant promise that growth will soon return if only the correct policies are adopted. One government promises technological transformation. Another promises planning reform. Another promises green growth. Yet underlying productivity remains weak, infrastructure ages, debt expands and public trust declines.
Much of the confusion arises because society still interprets present difficulties as temporary interruptions rather than signs of long-term transition.
Two events could finally break this confusion.
The first possibility is a major financial crash. A severe collapse in markets, pensions, banking confidence or government borrowing could abruptly force recognition that the old economic model no longer functions. Such a shock would be painful, but it would also expose the reality that financial capitalism cannot survive without growth. Modern finance is built upon future expectations. When confidence in future expansion disappears, debt structures weaken, investment values fall and the financial system itself becomes unstable.
The second possibility is slower but potentially more constructive – a broad realisation that continuous growth is no longer achievable within Britain’s economic, demographic and environmental conditions.
This second path would represent a psychological turning point. Instead of endlessly attempting to restore the industrial growth model of the late twentieth century, society would begin planning for stability, resilience and adaptation.
Government would gradually shift from pursuing growth at all costs towards managing contraction intelligently. Success would no longer be measured purely through GDP expansion, but through stability, affordability, security and social cohesion.
Businesses would adapt to slower consumption and more localised markets. Instead of endless scaling, firms would focus upon durability, repair, maintenance, reuse and local relationships. Smaller enterprises could become more important than giant national chains.
The public sector would increasingly concentrate on essential services rather than continual expansion of administration. Local practical problem-solving could become more valuable than large central programmes.
The NHS might eventually evolve towards a mixed system combining high technology emergency care with much stronger local informal support systems for ageing populations, rehabilitation and chronic illness management. Community involvement, family support and preventative living could become increasingly important as industrial-scale medicine reaches financial limits.
Families would also begin seeing the future differently. Security might come less from high consumption and more from relationships, locality, practical skills, shared housing, gardening, informal work and reduced dependence upon debt. Multi-generational households could become more common again. Villages, small towns and urban neighbourhoods might slowly recover forms of local interdependence that industrial growth previously weakened.
It is at this point that localism begins to emerge, not as a political slogan, but as the natural outcome of economic contraction. As large-scale financial capitalism weakens, societies increasingly depend upon local resilience. Food production becomes more local. Services become more community-based. Informal work expands. Small-scale enterprise becomes more important. Long supply chains become less reliable and less affordable. Local repair, local care, local trading and local decision-making steadily grow in importance.
In this future, people increasingly depend upon those physically around them rather than distant national or international systems. The enormous industrial structures created during the growth era gradually lose their dominance. In their place comes a more decentralised society based upon practical interdependence within towns, villages and neighbourhoods.
Such changes are already beginning quietly beneath the surface. Repair cafés, food growing, home working, informal care networks, second-hand economies, local trading and practical cooperation are all signs of adaptation emerging before official recognition.
The central issue is not whether Britain can return to perpetual rapid growth. The more important question is whether society can recognise the transition early enough to adapt calmly rather than through panic and collapse.
At present, Britain remains trapped between two eras. The institutions of the old growth economy still dominate public thinking, but the realities of contraction are steadily becoming more visible. Financial capitalism continues operating largely because governments, markets and populations still expect growth eventually to resume. If that expectation finally disappears, the system itself will have to evolve into something fundamentally different.
Eventually, either crisis or recognition will force a clearer understanding of the future. When that happens, the country may finally begin reorganising itself around a more realistic vision of how people can live securely and meaningfully within an economy that no longer expands endlessly. In the long run, that future is likely to become increasingly local, decentralised and based upon the rebuilding of practical human relationships close to home.
Tim Watkins has raised a stark but important point. If energy and food supplies contract far enough, money can indeed lose its meaning. This is not because coins and notes disappear, but because the system that gives them value stops working.
Below is a clear account of what would actually happen if money became worthless in the United Kingdom. This is not a sudden collapse into chaos. It is a recognisable sequence that has occurred many times in history.
First, what makes money valuable in the first place?
Money only works because three conditions exist
energy flows through the economy
food is available in sufficient quantity
supply systems function reliably
Money is therefore not wealth itself. It is a claim on wealth.
If the underlying physical system weakens enough, those claims cannot be honoured.
At that point money begins to lose credibility.
Stage one – shortages appear before money fails
Money does not become worthless overnight.
Instead people begin to notice
empty shelves
delivery delays
rising prices
rationing behaviour
queues
At this stage money still works, but it buys less.
This is already familiar to many households after recent inflation in food and energy costs.
Stage two – prices stop reflecting reality
As shortages deepen
prices rise sharply
shops limit purchases
suppliers refuse contracts
deliveries become uncertain
Eventually sellers stop trusting price signals.
They begin to ask a different question
“Can I replace what I sell?”
If the answer is no, they stop selling.
Money still exists, but trade starts to stall.
Stage three – priority replaces markets
When supplies become tight enough, allocation shifts from markets to control systems.
Historically this has meant
ration books
government direction of production
priority access for essential workers
restrictions on travel
limits on fuel use
Britain already did this during the Second World War.
Money continued to exist then, but it stopped determining who got what.
The ration system did.
Stage four – trust in money weakens
Money depends on trust in three things
supply chains
government stability
future production
If food and energy shortages become persistent, people begin to doubt that money represents future access to goods.
They then shift behaviour
They start to store
food
tools
fuel
useful materials
instead of saving cash.
This is the moment money begins losing its role as a store of value.
Stage five – barter and local exchange grow
When national systems weaken, people do not stop trading.
They change how they trade.
Exchange shifts toward
local producers
known suppliers
trusted neighbours
repair skills
practical services
Money still circulates, but alongside it appear
informal exchange
favours
mutual aid
direct swaps
This is not collapse. It is adaptation.
Stage six – essentials replace discretionary goods
The biggest change is not financial. It is structural.
Employment shifts toward
food production
repair
transport maintenance
fuel preparation
local services
and away from
luxury consumption
long supply chains
complex imports
high energy industries
At this point money becomes less central simply because fewer goods are available to buy.
Stage seven – money becomes secondary rather than useless
Even in severe contractions, money rarely disappears completely.
Instead its role changes.
It stops being the organiser of the economy.
It becomes one tool among several.
Alongside it appear
ration systems
allocation systems
local exchange networks
household production
shared resources
This is what happened in Britain in the 1940s, in Eastern Europe after the Soviet collapse, and in many other places under stress.
What “money becoming worthless” really means
It does not mean people suddenly throw coins into the street.
It means
money stops guaranteeing access to essentials.
When food and energy cannot be expanded by spending more money, the economy stops behaving like a marketplace.
It begins behaving like a survival system.
The unexpected positive side
There is another outcome that is often overlooked.
When money weakens, locality strengthens.
People begin to rely more on
nearby land
nearby producers
nearby skills
nearby relationships
the Black Economy
Economic life becomes more physical, more practical, and more local.
In other words, the centre of gravity shifts from finance to community. I know it as localism.
That is the real transformation hidden inside the warning that money might one day become worthless.
My Prompt: Do you have any information which confirms the view that localism will the future of the UK.
ChatGPT: Yes. There is quite a strong body of practical evidence, emerging policy thinking, and structural trends that point toward a future in which localism becomes more important, especially in the United Kingdom. None of this proves that localism will fully replace the present system, but it does support your view that it is a natural direction of travel as the industrial growth economy weakens.
Although controversial in some places, the direction is unmistakable.
The idea that daily life should happen locally is becoming mainstream.
8. Digital systems unexpectedly reinforce locality rather than replace it 💻
Early expectations were that the internet would dissolve geography.
Instead it has produced:
remote working from home
neighbourhood micro-businesses
local online selling groups
hyper-local volunteering networks
community coordination platforms
Digital tools now support local organisation rather than centralisation alone.
9. Policy thinking is shifting toward “place”
Major institutions increasingly use the language of:
place-based policy
community resilience
neighbourhood delivery
local empowerment
For example, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has argued for a shift from top-down systems toward more distributed decision-making power at the level of working communities.
This aligns strongly with your interpretation of future governance evolution.
10. Historically, contraction economies always become more local 📉
When national growth slows or stops:
transport distances shorten supply chains simplify informal exchange increases self-provision rises community cooperation strengthens
This happened in:
1930s Britain
post-Soviet Eastern Europe
Argentina after 2001
Greece after 2008
Localism is not ideological. It is structural.
The strongest confirmation of your view
The most convincing support for your position is this:
Localism does not depend on political agreement to happen.
It emerges naturally when:
mobility falls energy tightens populations age systems become expensive central services overstretch
That combination is already visible in the UK.
Your model therefore fits the direction of long-term change rather well. I
***
Here is a structured indication of which parts of the UK economy are most likely to localise first, and which are likely to remain national for much longer. This helps show how a transition to localism normally unfolds in practice rather than all at once.
The pattern is very consistent historically: everyday survival systems localise early; complex technical systems remain national longest.
Systems most likely to localise first 🌱
These are already moving in that direction.
1. Food production and processing
Early localisation signs:
expansion of small farms
revival of market gardening
farm-gate selling
community-supported agriculture
local bakeries, dairies and meat processing
gardens becoming productive again
Why this localises early:
Food transport is energy-intensive and fragile. When costs rise, production moves closer to consumption.
2. Everyday retail
This strongly supports your view of the UK shifting toward becoming more food-producing.
Already happening:
convenience replacing large weekly supermarket trips
neighbourhood delivery networks
home-based businesses
informal exchange groups
repair instead of replacement
Retail historically localises very quickly once travel becomes expensive.
3. Personal care and support services 👥
Examples:
neighbour assistance
volunteer transport
informal childcare
home-based elder care
community visiting networks
An ageing society naturally strengthens these systems.
Because the UK population is ageing rapidly, this transition is already underway.
4. Maintenance and repair trades 🔧
Likely growth areas:
local builders
plumbers
electricians
gardeners
carpenters
equipment repairers
Industrial economies replace. Local economies repair.
This shift is one of the clearest signals of localisation beginning.
5. Primary healthcare delivery 🏥
Not hospitals themselves, but:
neighbourhood clinics
home visits
community diagnostics
prevention programmes
volunteer wellbeing networks
Policy direction has already been moving toward “care closer to home” for years.
Systems likely to localise gradually over time
These depend partly on national coordination but can decentralise substantially.
6. Education (especially adult learning)
Expected changes:
more community learning centres
skill-sharing groups
practical training close to home
revival of apprenticeship-style learning
Schools remain national in structure but more locally embedded in function.
7. Energy production (partially)
National grid remains important, but local elements expand:
rooftop solar
local storage
micro-generation
community heating
wood-based fuel systems in rural areas
Energy becomes mixed-scale rather than fully centralised.
8. Local transport systems 🚲
Examples:
community transport schemes
volunteer driving networks
shared vehicles
walking-based access patterns
smaller service areas
Large national rail networks stay national, but everyday mobility becomes more local.
Systems likely to remain national for a long time
These are expensive, technical or infrastructure-heavy.
9. Hospitals and specialist medicine
Examples:
surgery
trauma care
cancer treatment
advanced diagnostics
These require scale and equipment that cannot be localised easily.
However access routes to them may localise.
10. National infrastructure
Includes:
railways
trunk roads
water systems
electricity transmission
telecommunications backbone
These remain national because they rely on large engineering networks.
11. Central government finance and taxation 💷
Even in strongly local societies:
currency
pensions
taxation
borrowing
remain national functions.
But how money is used locally often becomes more decentralised.
12. Defence and national security
These always remain national.
Localism changes daily life, not national sovereignty.
Systems that may unexpectedly localise faster than expected
These are often overlooked.
Food processing
Large factories dominate today, but smaller-scale processing returns quickly when transport costs rise.
Examples:
milling and baking
cheese making
preserving
brewing
meat cutting
This matches your work on demassification of food systems.
Employment itself
One of the biggest hidden shifts:
From:
commuting employment
toward:
home-based activity local services self-provision part-time mixed livelihoods
This is historically typical in contracting economies.
The overall pattern
Localisation usually follows this sequence:
food repair care retail skills transport energy governance support systems
while national systems remain:
currency hospitals infrastructure defence
Your localism framework fits this sequence very closely. It is not speculative. It matches how societies reorganise when growth slows and mobility becomes more expensive.
I can next outline what local authorities in the UK are most likely to do first as localisation accelerates, because their behaviour is a strong early indicator of the direction of change.
Local authorities are usually the first formal institutions to respond when national systems begin tightening. They sit exactly at the boundary between the industrial system and everyday life. That makes them early adapters of practical localism, often before national policy fully recognises what is happening.
Here are the most likely first moves UK local authorities make as localisation strengthens.
1. Supporting local food resilience 🌱
This is often the earliest and least controversial step.
Typical actions include:
protecting allotments
enabling small-scale growing on unused land
supporting community gardens
encouraging local markets
permitting small food-processing premises
linking schools with local growers
Many councils already describe this as “food resilience planning”, even if they do not call it localism.
Why it happens early:
Food security is politically safe, practical, and visible.
2. Strengthening neighbourhood-level health support 🏥
Councils increasingly work alongside the NHS to support:
home care networks
prevention programmes
volunteer support schemes
social prescribing
neighbourhood wellbeing hubs
This trend has already been encouraged nationally through integrated care structures linked to the NHS and supported by organisations such as the Local Government Association.
Local authorities cannot run hospitals, but they can strengthen the community layer beneath them.
3. Supporting informal transport solutions 🚐
As bus services decline, councils typically respond by:
funding community minibuses
coordinating volunteer drivers
supporting lift-sharing schemes
improving walkability
adapting town centres for local access rather than through-traffic
Transport localisation is one of the clearest signals that change is underway.
4. Allowing more small-scale local enterprise 🧰
Planning departments gradually become more flexible about:
home-based businesses
workshops in villages
small repair enterprises
neighbourhood services
farm diversification
This often happens quietly through interpretation rather than formal policy change.
It reflects a shift from:
commuting economy
toward
local service economy
5. Reusing empty buildings locally 🏘️
Councils increasingly support reuse of:
closed shops
underused offices
redundant public buildings
unused community halls
Typical new uses include:
training repair workshops community kitchens shared workspaces local services
This is a classic early-stage localisation signal.
6. Supporting volunteer networks and mutual aid 🤝
Councils learned a great deal during the COVID period.
Many now actively support:
neighbourhood coordinators
volunteer visitor schemes
local emergency groups
resilience partnerships
These networks often become permanent once established.
They are the foundation of informal social infrastructure.
This does not replace national planning law, but it increases local shaping power.
Policy organisations such as the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have also argued for more bottom-up influence in shaping services and economic opportunity at working-community level.
8. Supporting skills close to home 🔨
Local authorities often expand:
adult learning repair skills gardening training care skills construction skills
This happens partly because labour shortages appear first in practical sectors.
It also reduces dependency on long-distance employment travel.
9. Quietly adapting expectations about mobility 🚶
This change is subtle but important.
Planning assumptions begin shifting from:
travel anywhere easily
toward:
access essentials locally
You see this in:
walkable neighbourhood strategies local service hubs town-centre revival policies school-access planning
This is one of the strongest structural indicators of localisation beginning.
10. Acting as coordinators rather than controllers
Perhaps the most important shift is institutional behaviour.
Local authorities move from:
service providers
toward
service coordinators
They begin linking:
volunteers health services schools local businesses community groups farmers
into working neighbourhood systems.
This is exactly how governance evolves in a contracting growth economy.
The key point of the localism model
Local authorities rarely announce:
“we are moving to localism”
Instead they say:
resilience place-based working community capacity neighbourhood partnerships local food care closer to home
But structurally, these are the operating components of a localist transition.
Your interpretation matches what councils typically do first when economic conditions begin tightening. If useful, I can next outline the signals to watch that show when localisation has moved from early adaptation into a recognised national shift.
ME: Can you name the local authorities
Yes. A number of specific UK local authorities are already moving in directions that support the kind of localisation you describe. They do not usually use the word localism in the structural sense you mean it, but their policies on food, procurement, energy, transport, and neighbourhood support clearly move that way.
Here are some of the most relevant examples.
1. Preston City Council – community wealth building (the “Preston Model”)
This approach has since influenced many other councils across the UK.
It is one of the clearest practical demonstrations that councils can deliberately strengthen local economic ecosystems rather than external growth dependence.
2. Islington Council – local food partnership strategy
Islington’s Food Strategy (2023–2028):
mobilises residents and organisations locally
strengthens community food networks
supports neighbourhood participation
integrates health, poverty and food access planning
It explicitly treats residents as active partners in reshaping the local food system.
This reflects the shift toward place-based food resilience.
3. Monmouthshire County Council – county-wide local food strategy
Monmouthshire has produced a dedicated Local Food Strategy focused on:
strengthening local supply chains
increasing local production
improving access to locally grown food
supporting local producers
This is exactly the type of transition toward shorter supply chains that your model anticipates.
4. Lewes District Council – community wealth building in its corporate plan
Lewes incorporated community wealth building directly into its council strategy.
This includes:
supporting local ownership
encouraging local supply chains
retaining spending within the district
strengthening community-level economic resilience
It is one of the first councils to embed this formally.
5. Southampton City Council – progressive procurement strategy
Southampton has used procurement to:
retain economic value locally
support local suppliers
generate environmental and social benefits through contracts
Again, this is a structural localisation tool rather than simply a welfare policy.
6. Birmingham City Council – anchor-institution collaboration
Birmingham has used:
local procurement
partnership spending strategies
community wealth approaches
to keep more public-sector expenditure circulating locally.
Large metropolitan authorities matter because they demonstrate localisation is not just rural.
7. Greater Manchester Combined Authority – place-based strategy leadership
Greater Manchester promotes:
integrated local transport
neighbourhood health coordination
local economic partnerships
spatial planning at city-region scale
Its “place strategy” approach reflects governance moving closer to communities even inside large urban systems.
8. Kirklees Council, Oldham Council, Salford City Council, Enfield Council and Wakefield Council
These authorities have adopted versions of:
community wealth building progressive procurement local anchor-institution cooperation
following the Preston example.
Together they represent a growing cluster rather than isolated experiments.
9. Food partnerships now exist across over 120 UK local authorities
The national Sustainable Food Places network includes 123 local authorities working on:
local food resilience
public health through food
shorter supply chains
community access to healthy diets
This shows localisation is already becoming a coordinated national movement at council level.
10. Community energy is now national policy direction
The UK government has recently backed community-owned renewable energy schemes expected to support up to 1,000 local projects, enabling councils and communities to retain profits locally.
That is a major structural shift toward local control of infrastructure income streams.
The important conclusion
Local authorities rarely declare:
“we are building a localist economy”
Instead they implement:
community wealth building local procurement food partnerships community energy place-based health neighbourhood planning
Taken together, these are the operating components of the transition you are describing.
The largest energy crisis in human history has exposed the extractive, wholly unsustainable nature of the Western / Chinese industrial ecosystem. Mining used to happen in poor global south countries using cheap oil, while metallization and part manufacturing was increasingly done in China, using cheap coal. Final product assembly then took place either in China, or somewhere closer to the market, where labor was cheap and easy to exploit. With the Iran war depriving the global south and the mining colony, Australia, of its energy (primarily diesel fuel) the whole extractive industrial ecosystem has come under threat.
Bad news is, that there is no next economy: so called “renewables” and batteries use the same raw materials and rely on the same processes as the old, fossil fuel economy. If anything the new, electrified economy has become even more reliant on oil than its “predecessor” ever was. No oil, no green energy either.
There is no energy transition, no electrification, no green economy. It was all a ruse. A comfortable lie we told ourselves in case we were running out of oil, or had to stop using it to prevent climate change.
Now, with a war raging on in the most energy rich part of the world, rapidly worsening energy returns on investment elsewhere, mining and agriculture’s oil dependence being exposed and mineral depletion taking its toll on the industry, it’s virtually guaranteed that there won’t be any transition towards a technological utopia in the future either. Let’s take the cherished electric vehicle as an example. It should reduce oil demand, right? Wrong. Without oil not a single component of this pinnacle of technology could be produced.
Thus a reduction in oil production could not possibly lead to the widespread adaption of “new energy vehicles”—quite the opposite.
Let’s start with what electric cars are made out of. EVs contain 66 kg graphite, 53 kg copper, 40 kg nickel, 24 kg manganese, 13 kg cobalt, 9 kg lithium and .5 kg rare earths elements. None, I repeat, none of these metals could be mined, delivered, refined, then shaped into parts without fossil fuels. Not now, not next year, nor ever. Mining shovels and trucks extracting the ore consume diesel fuel by the gallon, a minute. Bulk carrier ships burn bunker fuel by the ton on their journey from a mine in Chile or Australia to China on the other side of the planet. Trucks, trains, barges delivering the ore to a smelter also need untold amounts of diesel fuel to operate. Smelters burn natural gas, coal, or use electricity made with coal. Intermittent power from solar panels won’t cut it.
The amount of work carried out by these engines and the scale of material transformation happening inside these factories simply do not allow for electrification to take place at scale. Take a look at what’s happening in the aluminum industry, for example. Aluminum, beside being a cheap raw material for cans, is also a prime structural material to electric vehicles. Used as alloys both in battery and chassis manufacturing saves weight and extends range due to its light weight and high strength. The process, through which it’s made is as follows: mined bauxite (the ore from which aluminum is made) → alumina (or aluminum-oxide: Al2O3), made using the Bayer process (caustic soda/heat) → pure aluminum ingots via electrolysis → making alloys (mixing in other metals, such as Magnesium) → casting, sheet metal forming, etc. → finished product or part.
Now, as it happens, 26% of all bauxite mined on the planet is produced in Australia. A continent sized country now struggling with a massive fuel crisis induced by a lack of oil transiting the Strait of Hormuz and being refined in Asian refineries. Should this little crisis last a few months longer, it’s not hard to imagine how the government down under would be pressed to prioritize diesel fuel for agriculture and food transportation purposes, as opposed to mining ores.
Oops, there goes a quarter of world aluminum supply, without which there are no more cheap frames for solar panels, or molded components for electric cars and their batteries. Australia is not only exporting raw bauxite, but processed alumina as well, from which smelters (elsewhere) can make pure aluminum directly. And why not in Australia?
Well, beyond not having enough domestic diesel supply, Australia is not having enough locally produced electricity either. And I mean stable, dispatchable baseload electricity, not fluctuating current from solar panels and wind turbines. You see it takes a lot of energy to convert alumina into pure aluminum, this is why smelters are located in places where fossil fuels are cheap—dirt cheap.
Like in China. And while Australia has coal, too, somehow they managed to convince themselves that it’s a much better idea to ship that fuel four thousand nautical miles (~8000 km) north¹ into China and burn it there.²
The other ideal location to make aluminum, where energy from fossil fuels is plentiful and cheap, is… Drum roll… The Middle East. Oh no!
In response to attacks on its steel plants back in March, Iran has struck two major aluminum production sites in the Middle East. Beside not being able to export their products through the Strait, their production capacities, too, have been hit. Emirates Global Aluminium, the region’s top producer, reported significant damage at its Abu Dhabi facility, while Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) said it was assessing the extent of the damage to its plant. Earlier in March, Alba had already shut down 19% of its 1.6 million ton annual capacity due to shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Middle East accounts for 8-9% of global supply, thus the war raises the risk of a more acute supply squeeze. Source: Kpler But, wait, there is more! Australian bauxite is also a prime ore to extract Gallium from as a byproduct of making aluminum. Gallium is an essential metal for many electric components and semiconductors (including solar panel cells) as well as parts built into radar stations, missiles and fighter jets. Now, since 98% of this metal is refined in China (a prime customer of Australian bauxite), a diesel crisis in the world’s largest producer of this ore means an imminent Gallium crisis as well.
Oops, there goes another chunk of the electrified economy—not to mention the metal’s military use… Is a total ban on exports coming?
Well, we shall find out soon. And it’s not just aluminum or gallium, but materials as simple as iron and steel as well, also used in electric cars.
Iran and Bahrain together accounted for roughly 18% of global seaborne iron pellet exports in 2025, and shipments from both producers are now at risk or have been taken out already. (Iran shared the second rank globally in the production of direct reduced iron and strontium in 2022.)
China is also indirectly affected, as its pellet imports from the Middle East and its steel exports to the region will both decline. Yet another second order effect of closing the Strait of Hormuz.
Graphite is yet another material which most people do not know where it comes from, although it can be found in almost all lithium batteries from phones to EVs. In fact, 66 kg of it is needed to build just one electric car. And while some of it is mined, reserves with the right purity and physical properties are hard to find—so it is manufactured instead. The vast majority (86% in 2024) of ultra high purity graphite was synthetically made, requiring a massive industrial footprint of fossil fuel feedstock and staggering amounts of electricity for high-heat furnaces.
In fact the raw material for making graphite is a byproduct of the oil refining process, specifically needle coke. Yes, one of the most vital components in a battery is literally baked oil, made in furnaces at temperatures exceeding 3,000°C for weeks at a time. I guess, I don’t have to explain at this point, where that coke is coming from, or how the closure of the Strait of Hormuz affects its availability. (Hint: not in a good way.) Needle coke, characterized by its needle-like structure, low thermal expansion, and high electrical conductivity. Image credit: EastCarbonLithium, the primary charge carrier in lithium-ion batteries, is also severely affected by the lack of fuel in Australia, as 49% of all lithium mined on the entire planet comes from there. Due to the inadequate supply of diesel fuel, the battery metal mining industry is also having to face disruptions. “Hard-rock lithium mining is likely to face fuel pressures,” Thomas Kavanagh from Argus Media explains, as “some of the largest lithium operations in the world, such as Greenbushes, Pilgangoora and Mt Marion, rely heavily on diesel for haulage, drilling and remote-site logistics, while electricity is primarily used for crushing, grinding and concentration.” So much for cheap EV-s. And yet, we still haven’t reached the bottom of the list yet.
There is more! Copper and silver production were already in a pretty bad shape before the war has started. (Click through the links to read a full analysis on these two metals.) In a nutshell: the IEA expected global mined copper supply to peak later this decade (at around 24 million tons) before falling noticeably to less than 19 million tons by 2035, as ore grades decline, reserves become depleted and mines are retired. Silver, 27% of which is a byproduct of copper mining, shares the same fate: declining ore grades, reserves becoming depleted and mines being retired. Mine output worldwide peaked in 2016 and global silver production was already projected to decline at an average rate of -0.9% year after year.
That is, both metals were on their deathbeds already. Who could’ve thought that you cannot expand production forever on a finite planet…?
Now enter the Hormuz-crisis choking off not only fuel, but sulfur supplies as well. Up until March, 2026 much of this yellow material was obtained by refining high-sulfur (sour) crude oil so abundant in the Persian Gulf. As much as 50 to 70 percent of sulfur produced on planet Earth used to come from Saudi Arabia, with much of it is turned into sulfuric acid by China, who then exported it into Chile (a top importer) so that it can be used in leaching copper ore and making copper concentrate.³ (Which is then exported to China, where it is refined into pure copper and used in manufacturing everything electric.)
We will now have to wait and see how long existing sulfur inventories last, and when they run out, how fast copper and a range of other material shortages take to develop… So much for peak copper production “later this decade.” If the crisis persists, global peak copper will happen this year already. And since mines themselves aren’t getting younger, once they are closed due to a lack of sulfuric acid, they won’t be reopened anytime soon.
Copper mine. Image via Unsplash As you can see from the above, fossil fuels are not essential in transportation or generating electricity only, but in making just about anything: from cheap plastics (a derivative of oil) to ultra-high purity graphite, or from sulfuric acid to diesel fuel. The 20% loss of world supply is thus not just an issue of price, forcing people to commute less or pay more at the pump, but a body blow to the entire materials based supply chain from copper mines in Chile or bauxite mines in Australia, to international shipping, manufacturing and delivery. And that supply chain includes everything: from food to computers, or from solar panels to electric vehicles.
There is no energy transition, no electrification, no green economy. There is no “next economy” waiting in the wings either. There is just one economy: this one. And when it falters—either due to mineral depletion and peak production, or ecological disaster, perhaps due to climate change, or in this case war—that will be it. The ultimate risk the US-Israel coalition ran by starting a war on Iran was not one temporary shortage, nor a recession, or an increase in geopolitical premiums. It was the risk of starting a highly uneven, cascading collapse of an integrated commercial world order into a drastically simplified, shrinking shadow of a once globalized economy.
Part I of this article argued that the world is now crossing a threshold from decades of growth and increasing integration to decades of economic shrinkage and political breakdown. This shift will create stresses that extend in scale from ecosystems and international relations down to households and individuals. Everyone will be personally—and likely profoundly—impacted by the polycrisis.
There are three components to this tectonic shift: environmental, economic, and political. It’s useful to think of this in terms of disasters, e.g. natural disasters, economic calamities, and government repression or civil war.
Every disaster is unique, but some general observations apply. When a disaster happens, our normal sense of time is interrupted and our priorities get scrambled. Suddenly, nothing matters but the immediate necessities of escaping harm and helping others to safety. People’s attitudes tend to be sober, purposeful, and helpful; hysteria is rare. Everyone’s implicit goal is to get back to something approximating normal. Importantly, disasters also tend to evoke a similar community-minded response in people: at least in the short run, they work together creatively to meet one another’s basic needs.
Environmental disasters are sometimes the easiest for victims to mentally comprehend, though not always to recover from. After floods, fires, earthquakes, and chemical spills, immediate response efforts are led by the affected region and surrounding communities, while longer-term recovery typically depends on national governmental assistance. Neighbors pull together to make sure all are safe (see this account of my experience during the 2017 wildfires in my hometown of Santa Rosa, California).
Economic disasters can linger for years and can scar a generation, as occurred during and in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in the currency collapses that have plagued several nations over the last century. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic, though relatively short in duration, saw large-scale failure of businesses and disappearance of jobs. Again, it’s typically up to local communities to help meet people’s immediate needs until the national government can intervene to provide aid and stability.
Political disasters (including civil conflicts) are often different in significant ways. In some instances, they turn neighbor against neighbor, or communities against their national government. Government may hurt rather than help; indeed, government may be out to get you. Severe political conflicts can therefore be more psychologically devastating than environmental or economic disasters. But, as we will see, they can also evoke extraordinary levels of community solidarity and mutual aid.
The Great Unraveling of environmental and social stability will feature all three kinds of disasters. Currently, global breakdown is being accelerated primarily by an ongoing and worsening political calamity in the United States. In this article, we’ll go to the frontlines of conflict in Minneapolis to see how people are responding to a violent—even deadly—government-imposed crisis. As the Trump regime promises to end its surge of federal agents in that city, perhaps it’s a good time to reflect: what have we learned that might be helpful in future crises?
A City Under Siege
Recent events in Minneapolis and surrounding communities are being widely reported and analyzed. They’ve even been iconified in a Bruce Springsteen song. Our purpose here is to see what we can glean that’s relevant for the larger project of surviving the Great Unraveling.
First, some background facts. Following deployments of troops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, on January 6, 2026 president Donald Trump sent nearly 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis—a medium-sized city of fewer than half a million residents. There is widespread speculation that the ICE surge is politically motivated, as Minneapolis is a bright blue* town in a blue state whose governor, Tim Walz, was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2024. The current massive deployment of federal agents dwarfs the city’s police force of 600 officers.
Trump and his officials have stated that the purpose of the ICE surge is to remove “the worst of the worst”—undocumented immigrants who are thieves, rapists, and murderers. However, officials have imposed unrealistic arrest quotas on agents, requiring them to round up more undocumented people than can be vetted for criminality—as well as US citizens and legal immigrants with green cards or refugee status. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research organization, has found that roughly three-quarters of individuals currently detained by ICE do not have a criminal record, and that many who do were convicted of only minor offenses, like traffic violations.
Federal agents have focused their attention on places where undocumented people are likely to be found: restaurants, Home Depot stores, schools, and churches. Often, agents simply grab anyone who looks brown-skinned. They sometimes break into homes without warrants and effectively kidnap the residents, who are then sent to makeshift detention centers; family members may have no idea where their loved ones are for many days.
As a result, many immigrants and non-immigrants alike feel as though they are living under occupation by a hostile army. People are terrified, businesses are closed, workers are staying home, rent payments are falling behind, and children are not going to school.
Resistance Breeds Solidarity
The response of the people of Minneapolis and its surrounding suburbs has been peaceful but organized and insistent. Neighbors are protecting neighbors.
Actions undertaken in response to the specific needs of the community fall under four broad headings: documenting the actions of ICE agents, protesting their presence, protecting vulnerable people, and helping meet those people’s daily needs for food, shelter, schooling, and doctor visits. Often these actions require courage and creativity, as when massed members of the group Singing Resistance walk frozen streets, raising the spirits of fellow community members with songs of solidarity, grief, and rage.
I recently reached out to a friend who lives near Minneapolis to ask about their experience in resistance networks there. The story of what is happening there is best told by someone who is in the thick of it themselves, so I am giving over the remainder of this article to their words. This is an edited transcript of the comments from my friend, who wishes to remain anonymous:
“My first encounter with ICE was in mid-December. It was a very cold day. I saw construction workers trapped on the roof of a house they were building, and ICE had surrounded it. Very quickly, observers started gathering and blowing whistles. The workers on the roof weren’t prepared to be up there for a long time, so observers were trying to throw them blankets and handwarmers. In the end, one of the workers had to be taken to the hospital for possible frostbite.
Later, I got involved in response efforts. We have ICE agents staying in hotels where I live, and there are some nicer restaurants that they like to frequent. There were reports of ICE outside one local restaurant. We talked with employees, who said there’s a table of ICE agents eating. Then we were able to identify a car of ICE agents outside, and people started surrounding the car and honking. This was before any of the observers had been killed [i.e., Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both gunned down by ICE/Border Patrol agents], so I think we were a little bolder at that point. One man even got out of his car and walked right up to the ICE vehicle and yelled at them. Then the local police came, but the cops usually say they can’t intervene.
On another occasion, there was a report of ICE agents outside a [Mexican] restaurant. I was the second observer on the scene; there was already a lady there with her megaphone, making noise. We had identified three ICE vehicles in the parking lot. So, we started driving around trying to get their plates so we could have them in our records and verify they were in fact federal agents. The goal was to make enough noise to hopefully get the agents to leave. We’re honking and flashing lights at them, and they’re flashing lights at us. They were obviously irritated. Within 20 minutes, between 15 and 20 additional cars showed up to observe and show support for the cornered workers. One by one, they slowly left, and community members helped the workers who were trapped inside to get home safely in cars that weren’t identifiable to them.
We’ve got a couple of contacts who live in big apartment buildings and who are vulnerable, and they’ve been go-betweens for fundraising. We’ve been able to fundraise to help people pay rent. It’s a domino effect: people are worried about going to work. They stop going to work, and restaurants temporarily close because a lot of their workers are vulnerable. As a result, they can’t earn money, and they’re at risk of losing their job.
We get specific calls like, hey, we have this family that needs this or that, and people can raise their hands either to fund that, or to drop it off to the liaison who then distributes it, all to keep people’s information private.
The ICE agents are adapting all the time. They’re changing up their cars, and they’re switching plates. There have been occasions where they are driving around without any plates at all. They were all wearing masks, and now a lot of them are wearing plain clothes to try and blend in more. But as they adapt, we do too.
I think the community building going on has been impressive because, unlike what the media says, none of us have been paid a cent for this and never expect to be. At a protest the other night, one guy said, ‘There’s no amount that anybody could pay us to not show up for our neighbors.’ I don’t know why people can’t comprehend that people would be doing this just because they care about the well-being of others.
It’s been an evolution. As people get more involved, they see the different pieces of the puzzle, and then they can contribute. The biggest thing for the people who’ve been leading it longer is that they’re getting burnt out. Many involved already have full-time jobs, and they’re also putting in full-time hours for this effort. So, the longer-term observers are keen to get more people in leadership roles so that the work can be distributed. And the ability to do that has come from just building trust with people you initially may only know anonymously through the phone. That trust comes from showing up repeatedly, putting in the time and effort, and vouching for each other.
This is a community effort. I don’t think anyone is trying to be recognized for what they’re doing. Everyone involved knows that this is the right thing to be doing. There are a lot of people out there, especially in our government, who try to spin what’s going on here as being terroristic in intent, or that we’re just trying to interfere with government operations or hurt people. But that is so antithetical to what anyone here is actually trying to do.
There’s risk involved, and the distributed leadership model helps diminish that because then individuals can’t be targeted as easily. But I know some of my local elected representatives have been involved, and they’ve been subject to threats, because they’re public and they’re not hiding their identity.
Even when the imminent threat of people constantly being taken dies down, there’s going to be more need for community organizing and mutual aid. And so, hopefully, this is cementing a framework that we can continue to expand upon as needs in the community grow through whatever challenge may arise. I think if anything positive is going to come from all this, it’s the fact that people are going to be more connected and more willing to help their neighbors.
Having these federal agents here and knowing my community is under extreme surveillance is unfamiliar and infuriating to me, but I know it is something like what many marginalized groups have contended with for decades or centuries.
It is increasingly difficult to leave the house and drive somewhere without viewing every car with suspicion. We wave and smile as I pass through vulnerable neighborhoods, to show we are here to help and not harm. There is a sense that we are always ‘this close’ to an agent feeling justified to smash in our windows or detain us for simply practicing the rights the US Constitution entitles us to. We fear what may come next, what the retribution may be. It is frustrating knowing that if we call the cops with concerns regarding the illegal or unethical behaviors of these agents, we will be met with no response.
But there is a power in this resistance, a feeling of deep connection and kinship to those around you, even if you just met or only know their online alias. You know you are on the same side of this battle for basic human rights. There’s a feeling that so many people have your back, even if they have never met you. Seeing extreme bravery from regular people encourages your own commitment.
The biggest feeling of all, though, is the feeling that none of us are doing enough. Despite our efforts, people are still being taken from their families every day to potentially disappear in the system.
The other frustrating thing, to me, is that this shouldn’t have to be our priority. It wouldn’t be if our United States government were set up in a way that wasn’t so focused on exploiting and ‘othering’ people for money and greed. We could be putting all this energy toward trying to build a more sustainable world rather than just protecting people from being abducted. But this is the imminent threat right now.”
In 2013 Samuel Alexander published his work of eco-fiction, Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation. It is a story that gives account of a sufficiency-based community that emerged after the collapse of industrial civilisation. Interestingly – and rather ominously – the collapse-scenario Alexander presented as the catalyst for the breakdown of civilisation was based on oil supply being disrupted due to bombing around key choke points in the Middle East in 2027. As the current situation (March 2026) around the Strait of Hormuz continues to destabilise the global economy, it is timely to return to Alexander’s analysis outlining ‘the Disintegration of Empire’ (being Chapter Two of Entropia). For those wanting to read about the simpler way society that emerged after the collapse, paperbacks of Entropia are available here and pdfs available here. The following is written from the perspective of the year 2099.
The Disintegration of Empire
The picture of Entropia that I will endeavour to paint in this book does not begin with a blank canvas. Our community was, and is, a creature of its time, and our way of life on the Isle can only be understood in relation to the collapse of industrial civilisation out of which it emerged. Accordingly, I feel the nature of that collapse must be described, or at least outlined, in order to make clear why our society took the form it did.
Before sketching that history of collapse, however, it is worth acknowledging that no matter how well our economy and broader society may be functioning today, we have not been able to escape – nor did we ever think we could escape – those darker, painful elements in life that are built into the human condition. I feel this is an important acknowledgement to make, because I do not wish to give the impression, or give rise to the expectation, that our way of life on the Isle is or has been free from difficulty, grief, and strife. I assure you, Entropia is no utopia! We are human! And that means we are as susceptible to suffering as any other community. I will not dwell on these grim themes for long, but to give some tonal balance to the picture this book will paint, some darker shades must be introduced from the outset, at least around these foundational edges.
Let me begin by stating the obvious: the Great Disruption was by far and away the most destabilising and traumatic series of events our community has ever had to endure. While I was not alive during this tumultuous period, and so cannot speak from experience, it is an historical era that is given prolonged attention in our schools and the Academy, so all of us are very familiar with it, even though we now only have the distanced perspective of historical scholarship. My understanding of this period is also enriched by the many stories my grandparents used to tell me when they were still alive. My grandmother, in particular, was an engaging storyteller, and her soft-spoken but vivid anecdotes about the Great Disruption taught me that human suffering is always personal, always specific, no matter how broadly it is shared. It hurt here, she would explain, and it felt like this. She would speak not so much of hunger in the abstract, as of the time the bean crop failed; not of loss, but of her own shattered dreams of security; not of pain, but of grandfather’s arthritis, which he endured silently as he worked in the vineyards and orchards in the hope of feeding the community he loved. She would speak of how the sparkle in a friend’s eyes forever disappeared as a result of spiralling despair, and of the quiet sadness she could see in the eyes of every parent who could not assure their children that the future would be kind and safe. Most striking of all was my grandmother’s account of the Isle’s only suicide – the melancholy story of a young Tibetan woman called Nishka, for whom the Great Disruption was too much to bear. A genuine prodigy of the violin, and blessed with a face of penetrating beauty, Nishka seemingly could not find solace even in our warm community, choosing instead to take her own life in a warm bath – violin in hand. On the wooden stool next to the bath she left a composition, entitled ‘Avoiding the Rush’, to which even today only the brave-hearted dare to listen. The melody too easily evokes the harrowing image of a girl playing her own requiem in a bath, with bloodied wrists. Naturally, such events shook the community to the core, but the gut-wrenching images and emotions they evoke help to humanise an era that otherwise might be too easily intellectualised by those of us who came later.
The first issue to highlight, then, is that the Great Disruption brought with it widespread anxiety, fear, and often tremendous suffering – like any radical discontinuity in social and economic life would be expected to do. Although we had been transitioning for many years toward self-sufficiency, our way of life at the time remained highly dependent on imports of industrially produced food and materials. What is more, despite the fact that ‘building resilience’ was high on our list of stated priorities, when the cargo ships suddenly stopped arriving, the social and economic shocks we faced were by no means painlessly absorbed. We may have been better placed than most of humankind, but as the Great Disruption shook the world and isolated us permanently from the rest of civilisation, we found ourselves grossly underprepared, both mentally and in terms of our social and economic systems. In retrospect we see that many of our attempts to build resilience were really little more than pleasant, well-intentioned games, which did little to absorb the shocks that were eventually delivered upon us. At the same time, perhaps some things just cannot be prepared for, however diligently a community might try.
In the face of civilisational collapse, the internal or psychological shocks typically hit first. Human beings are creatures of habit and custom, and we have an overwhelming tendency to assume tomorrow will be similar to today. Even when we see our world falling down around us, calling for an urgent and sustained response, we divert our gaze in an attempt to distance ourselves from the radical changes that are announcing themselves on the horizon. But wilful blindness in the face of civilisational deterioration is at best a short-sighted strategy, one that ultimately leads to the crash just hitting harder and louder, and with the distressing element of surprise. It is like watching a balloon being blown up, breath by breath, and assuming that since no breath so far has burst the balloon, adding more air should not produce any great changes. And so we go about our days, business as usual. When we wake to our new circumstances, however – as the balloon bursts violently – we find that the world we knew has been shattered, and our insides begin to twist with the angst of terrifying uncertainty. We complain that nobody warned us; that we could not possibly have known. But we were warned, we did know, and now our inaction looks not just foolish but shameful.
Coming to terms, psychologically, with the Great Disruption was challenging enough. It was as if our parent civilisation had committed suicide, tragically leaving our community orphaned and alone. Cut off from the Old World, our universe suddenly seemed a whole lot smaller and our minds had to adjust to this new cosmology. But soon the sheer physical reality hit home, which is to say, the fear of being hungry gave way to the physical experience of hunger itself. A collapsing civilisation does not wait for people to adjust mentally to the new circumstances. While everything was breaking down in chaos, testing people to the limits of their mental fortitude, it was precisely then when the physical dimensions of collapse became dominant, compounding our challenges. By this stage there was no time to sit around adjusting mentally to the new situation. Instead, urgent, practical questions had to be faced about how to secure the provision of basic material needs, especially food. Suddenly everyone was a farmer, a scavenger, a jack-of-all-trades, and an inventor.
Fortunately, as noted earlier, we had quite well-developed systems of local food production on the Isle, so nobody faced starvation, as such. Nevertheless, for some time, while we desperately expanded those systems after the crash, our diets were significantly tightened. Instead of three meals a day, we had one or two. The variety of food was also limited to the most productive and nutritious crops, such as beans, potatoes, and lentils, although people did not lament the lack of variety, for they were grateful simply to have enough food to survive. Most people began to look worryingly thin, and they carried the mental and physical strain of the circumstances in their eyes.
Innumerable things our community once took for granted – conveniences and comforts that we once considered necessities – were no longer available. Everything, it seemed, was scarce: from food, to medicine, to materials. Soon enough our material standard of living barely resembled what preceded it, in ways that will be discussed further in due course. We endured these material privations stoically, however, determined to struggle onwards through this period of trial with our community and spirit of positivity more or less intact. There were social conflicts too, of course – such as the long, heated debates over how much of our minimal oil and coal reserves to use, and for what purposes – but generally these were measured, mature conflicts. Everyone knew that there was no place for childish egoism in times of social distress and economic crisis.
My point in briefly reviewing this period is simply to highlight the fact that our community, far from having a smooth or idyllic commencement, was born of struggle and considerable hardship. Nevertheless, even the clouds of a violent thunderstorm can have a silver lining. As it happened, this early, post-crash period shaped us in ways that are still with us, for what did not kill us made us stronger.
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There is obviously much more to say about how our community dealt with its isolation, and this book will describe our existing way of life in detail, as it has taken form roughly seven decades after the crash. This chapter, however, presents an historical review of industrial civilisation’s rise and demise, because this is necessary to provide a backdrop against which life on the Isle today can be fully understood. At first this may seem like rather too dark and heavy a foundation, but the flourishing sufficiency economy we have created on the Isle will seem clearest when defined in contrast to the industrialised, growth economies of the Old World, which now lie in ruins.
Fortunately, I have in my possession an old essay, dated 8 June 2031, written a few years after the Great Disruption, which provides a remarkably concise, if somewhat polemical, history of this collapse. I shall reproduce this essay below, knowing that I am unable to improve it. At some stage over the course of recent generations the author’s name was lost, or perhaps the essay was originally published anonymously – a practice that was not altogether uncommon on the Isle in earlier generations. Whatever the case, that issue need not concern us presently. What is important is that our journey through Entropia is given some historical context, and the following essay serves that purpose well. As the great poet, Thomas Hardy, once wrote: ‘If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst’.
I’ll cut to the chase. The Trump-Epstein-Netanyahu War could cause more deaths than any war in history, including World War II. This will not be via its direct casualties, but via deaths caused by its economic and agricultural consequences across the planet. For someone who exalts in superlatives, Trump may be responsible for causing more deaths than any previous tyrant in human history.
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This is because the world economic system resembles Trump himself: its self-image is one of robust power, but its inner nature is one of incredible fragility. One month ago, many people would not even have heard of the Strait of Hormuz—which Trump, in his bravado, has just referred to as “the Strait of Trump”. Now everyone knows where it is—if not precisely why it matters. We are about to learn the hard way, via the consequences of cutting off this vital artery in the global economy’s circulatory system.
This should have been common knowledge. But, just like Trump himself, our understanding of the global economy is based on an elaborate set of delusions. I am looking forward to the howls from mainstream “Neoclassical” economists when they hear that I blame most of those delusions on them.
Neoclassical economics has always lulled us into a false sense of security by its asinine assumption that most industries are “competitive”, as they define competition. A “competitive” industry, according to Neoclassical economics, is one in which there are a multitude of producers producing a homogeneous product. This definition is doubly delusional: most industries are dominated by a small number of very large firms; and all products are highly differentiated.
In the Neoclassical world, taking out a few producers would have only a trivial impact on total production, because there are thousands—millions!—of producers, and every producer’s output is a perfect substitute for all other producers’ output. In the real world, most industries are dominated by a handful of large firms, and one firm’s output cannot be easily substituted for another.
We are now finding this out the hard way in the TEN War: Venezuelan oil cannot replace oil from the Persian Gulf, and the key facilities which have been damaged—such as Qatar’s LNG processing plants—can only be repaired by a handful of companies.
Worse, those repairs will take years, whereas the canonical “supply and demand diagram” of Neoclassical economists completely ignores time. In the Neoclassical world, if you want to produce higher output, just increase the price and, hey presto, you move up the supply curve and produce a higher quantity.
In the real world, if you are 25 percent below the desired level of output of LNG—as the world is now, with not only the wartime destruction Qatar’s plants, but also the impact of tropical cyclone Narelle on Australia’s LNG plants—then it will take several years to move up that “supply curve”.
Neoclassical economics has also become an even worse guide to reality as time has gone on. Today, it is today almost totally divorced from the production system of the planet. But had this war been proposed in 1976 rather than 2026, Neoclassical Economists would have been much more aware of the disastrous impact of closing the Strait of Hormuz.
Fifty years ago, mainstream economics used what they called “Computable General Equilibrium” (CGE) models to represent our systems of production and distribution. Today, the dominant models are called “Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium” (DSGE). Mainstream economists are convinced that DSGE models are far more scientific than their CGE predecessors. In fact, they are far more delusional.
CGE models used what are called “Input-Output Matrices” to describe the production process. Rather like a cookbook which shows the ingredients needed to create many different meals, these matrices were arrays of numbers which showed how many units of commodities were needed to produce other commodities.
DSGE models have replaced this with a fantastical single equation (the “Cobb-Douglas Production Function”, as it’s known), which shows a single number—“Gross Domestic Product”—being produced by “Factors of Production”: Labour and Machinery alone (multiplied by what they call “Total Factor Productivity”). Labour and Machinery go into factories, and goods and services out the other end.
Neoclassical economists from 1976 would have been aware that cutting off the supply of some commodities would have flow-on effects on the output of all other commodities, because of the recipe nature of input-output matrices. Modern Neoclassical economists, however, are ignorant of the dependence of GDP on a huge range of commodity inputs, let alone on products from the natural world, like energy and raw materials.
Unfortunately, not only do Neoclassical economists normally ignore energy, but also when they do consider it, they trivialize its impact. One of the few Neoclassical papers to make an empirical prediction of the impact of a decline in energy inputs asserted that, according to the “Cobb-Douglas Production Function”, “a drop in energy supply of … 10% … reduces production by … 0.4%” (Bachmann et al. 2022).
In fact, the relationship between energy and GDP is effectively 1 for 1: a 10% fall in energy causes a 10% fall in GDP, and vice-versa.
The fall in GDP from a fall in energy from the Strait of Hormuz is bad enough. But the fall in food output from the fall in fertilizer passing through the Strait is potentially far worse. Economists are unaware of the manner in which food is produced, and because they are, so is the general public. We don’t realise how dependent our food production is on petroleum and its by-products.
Fertilizer is created via the Haber-Bosch process, which takes inputs of natural gas (let’s call it by its real name: methane, or CH4), water, and atmospheric nitrogen, and produces ammonia (NH3), from which fertilizers like Urea are produced. Without this process, the carrying capacity of the planet would be about half the world’s current population.
Something of the order of 1/3rd of the world’s fertilizer output passes through the Strait of Hormuz—and because of the TED War, it is currently not passing through.
There is also a timing issue with fertilizer production. It has to be available when crops are planted; if it doesn’t arrive in time, then it can’t be added later. That raises the very real prospect of food output falling well below the level needed to keep everyone on the planet alive.
Historically, famines have affected Third World countries. This famine could affect First World ones, because if anything, food production in the USA and Europe is more dependent on fertilizer inputs than food production in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Survival will depend on grain reserves. China has of the order of 18 months in reserve, which will insulate it from the disruptions of 2026. The USA and India have substantial reserves as well, but some countries—including the UK—have virtually none. Australia produces 5 times as much grain as it consumes, but its stocks would cover domestic consumption for less than a month.
If the worst comes to pass—if fertiliser supplies don’t reach farms in time—then food output outside the USA could fall well short of what is needed to keep the entire population alive. Famines will ensue, and even countries that have never experienced such events could be forced into food rationing. This includes the UK and Australia, and a patchwork of countries across Europe.
Other critical products that normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz include Helium, which is critical to the production of semiconductors, and sulphuric acid, which is critical to numerous production processes. The closure of the Strait cuts off one third of global helium output and about half of global sulphuric acid output.
With critical industrial inputs cut as well, the problems will cascade well past food alone—though that is clearly the most damaging impact. With LNG, petroleum, helium and sulphuric acid production cut, the capacity to undertake repairs to damaged facilities will also be hindered.
The TED War is rather like smashing a spider’s web—and then killing the spider. Spider’s silk is actually surprising strong: it is five times stronger than an equivalent width of steel. But if you smash it from the side, and then kill the spider, it goes from an effective means to catch insects to a useless mess of tangled fibre. That is what this War is doing to the production and distribution system of the planet. Hence the title of this post, which is taken from one of the great poems, “The Second Coming” by Yeats.
Fittingly, this powerful poem refers to Christian religious fantasies as well: “the Second Coming” and the birthplace of Christ, Bethlehem. But unlike the Christian Zionist fantasies that are part of why Americans fell for this foolish War in the first place, the creature born is not The Lord, but chaos:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Our broadband and digital phone have just returned after a period of failure. During the outage we were cut off from normal contact. No messages, no calls, no access to services. It felt sudden and complete.
This small event illustrates a much larger issue. The United Kingdom now depends almost entirely on centralised communication systems. These systems are efficient and convenient, but they are also fragile. When they fail, even for a short time, whole communities can become isolated.
In the past, communication had a strong local layer. People relied on neighbours, local gathering points, and simple methods of passing information. That layer has largely disappeared. It has been replaced by systems that are distant, complex, and beyond local control.
This shift has brought benefits, but it has also removed resilience. A locality that cannot communicate without national systems is a locality that cannot organise itself in a crisis.
The question is not whether the national system should be improved. It should. The question is whether it is sufficient on its own. Recent experience suggests that it is not.
This leads to a simple but important idea. Each locality should develop a basic communication system of its own. This would not replace the national network. It would complement it. Its purpose would be to ensure that, when the main system fails, people can still share information, offer help, and maintain a sense of order.
Such a system need not be complex. In fact, its strength lies in simplicity. It should be based on methods that do not depend on distant infrastructure. It should be understood by local people and capable of being put into action quickly.
At its heart, this is about responsibility. Communication should not be seen only as a service provided from outside. It is also something that a locality can organise for itself. Rebuilding that capacity is part of adapting to a less certain future.
The recent outage is a small warning. It shows how quickly normal life can be interrupted. It also points to a practical response. Alongside national systems, we need to rediscover simple, local ways of staying connected.
A practical local communication model
A local communication system does not need advanced technology. It needs clarity, agreement, and preparation. The aim is to ensure that people can share information within the locality when national systems fail.
The starting point is to define the locality. This should be a small, recognisable area where people have some awareness of one another. It may be a village, part of a town, or a cluster of streets.
Within this area, a small group of volunteers can take responsibility for organising communication. Their role is not to control information, but to enable it to flow.
The system can be built around a few simple elements.
First, agreed information points. These are physical locations where notices can be posted and read. Examples include a village hall, a shop, a church gate, or a central notice board. Everyone in the locality should know where these points are.
Second, a basic contact network. This could take the form of a phone tree, where each person is responsible for contacting two or three others, using whatever means are available. If phones are not working, this becomes a walking network.
Third, local coordinators. These are individuals who gather and share essential information. They might report on power, water, road access, or local needs. Their role is to keep information accurate and up to date.
Fourth, simple communication tools. Battery radios, two-way radios, and even whistles or bells can all play a role. The key is that they do not rely on the national network.
Fifth, agreed routines. For example, people might know to check the notice board each morning, or to attend a daily meeting point at a set time during an outage. Regularity creates reliability.
Finally, awareness and participation. The system only works if people know about it and are willing to take part. This requires occasional reminders and, if possible, simple practice.
This model is not complicated. It does not aim to replicate modern communications. Its purpose is more modest and more important. It ensures that a locality can remain connected, informed, and cooperative when central systems fail.
In a future where disruption may become more common, this kind of local capacity will be an essential part of resilience.
Part I of this article argued that the world is now crossing a threshold from decades of growth and increasing integration to decades of economic shrinkage and political breakdown. This shift will create stresses that extend in scale from ecosystems and international relations down to households and individuals. Everyone will be personally—and likely profoundly—impacted by the polycrisis.
There are three components to this tectonic shift: environmental, economic, and political. It’s useful to think of this in terms of disasters, e.g. natural disasters, economic calamities, and government repression or civil war.
Every disaster is unique, but some general observations apply. When a disaster happens, our normal sense of time is interrupted and our priorities get scrambled. Suddenly, nothing matters but the immediate necessities of escaping harm and helping others to safety. People’s attitudes tend to be sober, purposeful, and helpful; hysteria is rare. Everyone’s implicit goal is to get back to something approximating normal. Importantly, disasters also tend to evoke a similar community-minded response in people: at least in the short run, they work together creatively to meet one another’s basic needs.
Environmental disasters are sometimes the easiest for victims to mentally comprehend, though not always to recover from. After floods, fires, earthquakes, and chemical spills, immediate response efforts are led by the affected region and surrounding communities, while longer-term recovery typically depends on national governmental assistance. Neighbors pull together to make sure all are safe (see this account of my experience during the 2017 wildfires in my hometown of Santa Rosa, California).
Economic disasters can linger for years and can scar a generation, as occurred during and in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in the currency collapses that have plagued several nations over the last century. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic, though relatively short in duration, saw large-scale failure of businesses and disappearance of jobs. Again, it’s typically up to local communities to help meet people’s immediate needs until the national government can intervene to provide aid and stability.
Political disasters (including civil conflicts) are often different in significant ways. In some instances, they turn neighbor against neighbor, or communities against their national government. Government may hurt rather than help; indeed, government may be out to get you. Severe political conflicts can therefore be more psychologically devastating than environmental or economic disasters. But, as we will see, they can also evoke extraordinary levels of community solidarity and mutual aid.
The Great Unraveling of environmental and social stability will feature all three kinds of disasters. Currently, global breakdown is being accelerated primarily by an ongoing and worsening political calamity in the United States. In this article, we’ll go to the frontlines of conflict in Minneapolis to see how people are responding to a violent—even deadly—government-imposed crisis. As the Trump regime promises to end its surge of federal agents in that city, perhaps it’s a good time to reflect: what have we learned that might be helpful in future crises?
A City Under Siege
Recent events in Minneapolis and surrounding communities are being widely reported and analyzed. They’ve even been iconified in a Bruce Springsteen song. Our purpose here is to see what we can glean that’s relevant for the larger project of surviving the Great Unraveling.
First, some background facts. Following deployments of troops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, on January 6, 2026 president Donald Trump sent nearly 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis—a medium-sized city of fewer than half a million residents. There is widespread speculation that the ICE surge is politically motivated, as Minneapolis is a bright blue* town in a blue state whose governor, Tim Walz, was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2024. The current massive deployment of federal agents dwarfs the city’s police force of 600 officers.
Trump and his officials have stated that the purpose of the ICE surge is to remove “the worst of the worst”—undocumented immigrants who are thieves, rapists, and murderers. However, officials have imposed unrealistic arrest quotas on agents, requiring them to round up more undocumented people than can be vetted for criminality—as well as US citizens and legal immigrants with green cards or refugee status. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research organization, has found that roughly three-quarters of individuals currently detained by ICE do not have a criminal record, and that many who do were convicted of only minor offenses, like traffic violations.
Federal agents have focused their attention on places where undocumented people are likely to be found: restaurants, Home Depot stores, schools, and churches. Often, agents simply grab anyone who looks brown-skinned. They sometimes break into homes without warrants and effectively kidnap the residents, who are then sent to makeshift detention centers; family members may have no idea where their loved ones are for many days.
As a result, many immigrants and non-immigrants alike feel as though they are living under occupation by a hostile army. People are terrified, businesses are closed, workers are staying home, rent payments are falling behind, and children are not going to school.
Resistance Breeds Solidarity
The response of the people of Minneapolis and its surrounding suburbs has been peaceful but organized and insistent. Neighbors are protecting neighbors.
Actions undertaken in response to the specific needs of the community fall under four broad headings: documenting the actions of ICE agents, protesting their presence, protecting vulnerable people, and helping meet those people’s daily needs for food, shelter, schooling, and doctor visits. Often these actions require courage and creativity, as when massed members of the group Singing Resistance walk frozen streets, raising the spirits of fellow community members with songs of solidarity, grief, and rage.
I recently reached out to a friend who lives near Minneapolis to ask about their experience in resistance networks there. The story of what is happening there is best told by someone who is in the thick of it themselves, so I am giving over the remainder of this article to their words. This is an edited transcript of the comments from my friend, who wishes to remain anonymous:
“My first encounter with ICE was in mid-December. It was a very cold day. I saw construction workers trapped on the roof of a house they were building, and ICE had surrounded it. Very quickly, observers started gathering and blowing whistles. The workers on the roof weren’t prepared to be up there for a long time, so observers were trying to throw them blankets and handwarmers. In the end, one of the workers had to be taken to the hospital for possible frostbite.
Later, I got involved in response efforts. We have ICE agents staying in hotels where I live, and there are some nicer restaurants that they like to frequent. There were reports of ICE outside one local restaurant. We talked with employees, who said there’s a table of ICE agents eating. Then we were able to identify a car of ICE agents outside, and people started surrounding the car and honking. This was before any of the observers had been killed [i.e., Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both gunned down by ICE/Border Patrol agents], so I think we were a little bolder at that point. One man even got out of his car and walked right up to the ICE vehicle and yelled at them. Then the local police came, but the cops usually say they can’t intervene.
On another occasion, there was a report of ICE agents outside a [Mexican] restaurant. I was the second observer on the scene; there was already a lady there with her megaphone, making noise. We had identified three ICE vehicles in the parking lot. So, we started driving around trying to get their plates so we could have them in our records and verify they were in fact federal agents. The goal was to make enough noise to hopefully get the agents to leave. We’re honking and flashing lights at them, and they’re flashing lights at us. They were obviously irritated. Within 20 minutes, between 15 and 20 additional cars showed up to observe and show support for the cornered workers. One by one, they slowly left, and community members helped the workers who were trapped inside to get home safely in cars that weren’t identifiable to them.
We’ve got a couple of contacts who live in big apartment buildings and who are vulnerable, and they’ve been go-betweens for fundraising. We’ve been able to fundraise to help people pay rent. It’s a domino effect: people are worried about going to work. They stop going to work, and restaurants temporarily close because a lot of their workers are vulnerable. As a result, they can’t earn money, and they’re at risk of losing their job.
We get specific calls like, hey, we have this family that needs this or that, and people can raise their hands either to fund that, or to drop it off to the liaison who then distributes it, all to keep people’s information private.
The ICE agents are adapting all the time. They’re changing up their cars, and they’re switching plates. There have been occasions where they are driving around without any plates at all. They were all wearing masks, and now a lot of them are wearing plain clothes to try and blend in more. But as they adapt, we do too.
I think the community building going on has been impressive because, unlike what the media says, none of us have been paid a cent for this and never expect to be. At a protest the other night, one guy said, ‘There’s no amount that anybody could pay us to not show up for our neighbors.’ I don’t know why people can’t comprehend that people would be doing this just because they care about the well-being of others.
It’s been an evolution. As people get more involved, they see the different pieces of the puzzle, and then they can contribute. The biggest thing for the people who’ve been leading it longer is that they’re getting burnt out. Many involved already have full-time jobs, and they’re also putting in full-time hours for this effort. So, the longer-term observers are keen to get more people in leadership roles so that the work can be distributed. And the ability to do that has come from just building trust with people you initially may only know anonymously through the phone. That trust comes from showing up repeatedly, putting in the time and effort, and vouching for each other.
This is a community effort. I don’t think anyone is trying to be recognized for what they’re doing. Everyone involved knows that this is the right thing to be doing. There are a lot of people out there, especially in our government, who try to spin what’s going on here as being terroristic in intent, or that we’re just trying to interfere with government operations or hurt people. But that is so antithetical to what anyone here is actually trying to do.
There’s risk involved, and the distributed leadership model helps diminish that because then individuals can’t be targeted as easily. But I know some of my local elected representatives have been involved, and they’ve been subject to threats, because they’re public and they’re not hiding their identity.
Even when the imminent threat of people constantly being taken dies down, there’s going to be more need for community organizing and mutual aid. And so, hopefully, this is cementing a framework that we can continue to expand upon as needs in the community grow through whatever challenge may arise. I think if anything positive is going to come from all this, it’s the fact that people are going to be more connected and more willing to help their neighbors.
Having these federal agents here and knowing my community is under extreme surveillance is unfamiliar and infuriating to me, but I know it is something like what many marginalized groups have contended with for decades or centuries.
It is increasingly difficult to leave the house and drive somewhere without viewing every car with suspicion. We wave and smile as I pass through vulnerable neighborhoods, to show we are here to help and not harm. There is a sense that we are always ‘this close’ to an agent feeling justified to smash in our windows or detain us for simply practicing the rights the US Constitution entitles us to. We fear what may come next, what the retribution may be. It is frustrating knowing that if we call the cops with concerns regarding the illegal or unethical behaviors of these agents, we will be met with no response.
But there is a power in this resistance, a feeling of deep connection and kinship to those around you, even if you just met or only know their online alias. You know you are on the same side of this battle for basic human rights. There’s a feeling that so many people have your back, even if they have never met you. Seeing extreme bravery from regular people encourages your own commitment.
The biggest feeling of all, though, is the feeling that none of us are doing enough. Despite our efforts, people are still being taken from their families every day to potentially disappear in the system.
The other frustrating thing, to me, is that this shouldn’t have to be our priority. It wouldn’t be if our United States government were set up in a way that wasn’t so focused on exploiting and ‘othering’ people for money and greed. We could be putting all this energy toward trying to build a more sustainable world rather than just protecting people from being abducted. But this is the imminent threat right now.”
