Can't disagree, and sounds just up my doomer street. Yes, we can turn things around, or even recalibrate for a new world, but there is no appetite for the hard headed long term thinking needed. Most of the commentariat assume that a new PM with a warm glow and a bit of charm is all that is needed. I expect only a real crisis will concentrate minds.
Yeah agreed. Everyone seems to want their go on the money printer. It’s about their own special entry in the history books rather than actually doing the hard, thankless work of fixing things. Trouble now is, the tax take is likely at or beyond a maximum in terms of fiscal benefit. So we’re entering an era of taxation for ideological reasoning as opposed to raising revenue. CGT is a great example, HMRC have already said we’ll likely take less tax with a 10 point rise from here. But it won’t stop them from doing it.
Not sure if your doomscape covered ideology as a complicating factor. The ideologues in charge aren’t interested in a give and take discussion about fasting challenges together. They are convinced they are right, or worse, see a high tax low growth future as something desirable. Maybe out of the wreckage a fair society will emerge? I don’t know, but whatever it is, is terrifying.
I don’t have any major disagreements with your analysis. A couple of points: Inversion 3: the world - there appears to be an implicit assumption that the Trump approach will outlast him. It could go the other way and we could see a reassertion of a rules based international order of which China is a part. China tends to be reactive in its imposition of restrictions on exports of rare commodities etc. China has been more committed to free trade ( albeit with some dumping of eg EVs) than the capitalist west .The Chinese “ threat “ tends to be over played.
Inversion 5: The Peace - experience from recent & current wars suggests that drone and other remote weapons technologies are proving remarkably effective against conventional defence/war “ kit” so beloved of our generals and admirals ( who we still seem to have in abundance). Defence procurement programmes (eg the Ajax tank ) have been …err, less than well managed. Much of “ enemy ( Russian?) activity is focused on disruption to our information and communication systems , not traditional “ defence” spending.I’m not convinced by the “ let’s chuck more money at defence” argument.
However your overall argument that this is a new era, that it requires paradigm shifts (groan)in thinking and governance makes sense. You say:
“The common ingredients are worth stating: an honestly named emergency, a coalition wider than one party, and mechanisms deliberately placed beyond the reach of the annual political auction.” The conditions for these things to happen do not exist: there is no political incentive to re engineer the machine; it’s more politically rational to kick cans down the road ( eg Care policy , nuclear policy). In the absence of a collaborative political culture, it looks like change will end up being crisis driven ( which the British state is quite good at…).
I agree. I believe it’ll be crisis that dictates a change in order. And I fully expect a major fiscal crisis to hit in the short to medium term. Britain couldn’t be further from the conditions required to proactively fix the structural issues before us. So emergency measures it will be, and the sad thing is, the cost is always greater… not just financially, but in other things we give up in the process.
Outside of this analysis, in the private sector you can feel a turning of the tide. Things aren’t functioning as they need to. Energy is one thing, but there’s a deeper rot and I’ve seen it across so many industries now. This country may have growing unemployment and economic inactivity, but there’s also a big talent shortage. Something somewhere has broken badly. My fear is that we won’t have the platform to rebuild from as we’ve done through history.
Given the fractious years we likely have ahead, a lot can change. But on the current trajectory, I can’t help but feel we have an era of crisis and upheaval lying in wait, in all honesty, we’re already going through it. The frustration, as you probably recognised in the article, is it’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. The political levers available don’t appear to connect to anything and the people in the command centre are there for theatre, not to actually do anything.
Your longer point about immigration and demographics is correct, I think.
Immigration doesn’t solve anything in relation to an ageing population.
It (1) creates an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, in which ever-greater numbers of immigrants are required to support the previous wave as they age, and (2) irresponsibly kicks the can down the road, in the hope that our children can sort out an issue we weren’t imaginative or brave enough to solve ourselves.
On population decline overall, I’m not convinced that it’s such a terrible thing.
The British Empire was arguably at its peak in about 1880, when Britain’s population (excluding Ireland) was around 30 million. Consider how dynamic that population must have been, to construct an empire on which the sun never set. Today, the British population is close to double that number. Do raw numbers = dynamism? Clearly not.
It might be said that the population in 1880 was younger, on average, than today - and that’s true. But in 1880, being in your 50’s was seriously old; today most 50 somethings are still working and highly productive. Given the right incentives, they - and people in their 60’s and 70’s - could be much more productive still.
Consider also the Republic of Ireland, which has a population of about 8.2 million in 1841. Today the Irish population is still a million people lower than at its’s peak, but the Irish have never been as materially wealthy as today.
With AI and automation moving ahead quickly, our reliance on humans to do work will continue to decline.
Human capital is worth preserving for itself, I believe, and ideally we’d turn around the falling birthrates in developed countries by supporting parents - and honouring parenthood - better than we do now. But I don’t believe that a falling population is any kind of real economic problem, except for those who focus only on the limited measure of GDP as the yardstick for success.
What a clear sighted article re the issues we face. Thanks very much.
I think it’s really clear we have the wrong politicians for the issues we’ve faced:
1. May for Brexit was rubbish at negotiating and the remainer guerilla war in Parliament still leaves a taste for a lot of people ( I voted Remain BTW)
2. Boris for Covid (would have suited May)
3. Liz Truss with need for growth but crass remedy exploding the LDI bomb
4. Rishi - no hope given above
5. Starmer for Growth (“is our number one priority”) with a bunch of front / back bench MPs drawn from the Public sector more interested in the politics of sanctimony. None of them have business experience. Maxing borrowing (80% higher in 24-29 pre Labour coming to power) Tax and the size of the State is fixing spend & then hoping for growth exemplifies their lack of business / fiscal acumen.
6. This doesn’t change with Burnham unless he’s brave but more tax & socialism is not the answer. Growth is …
Your analysis re change only comes with crisis chimes with economists such as Liam Halligan who has been predicting a fiscal crisis ever since Labours first October 24 budget (note since then 30 year Gilts have been higher than the one day peak of Truss since then)
Your article has articulated very clearly the issues… but hasn’t strayed into the political. Which, if any, of the Political Parties are best equipped to deal with these issues and articulate/ address the trade-offs either before or after, a crisis? The Tories have form on this obviously.
Note that if we have a crisis it will be in all likelihood a technocratic Government imposed externally - the lessons of Greece are very sobering. Do you see authoritarianism as one potential outcome in the UK, be it left or right in response to a zero sum game where lots of people “lose”…
The most important article I’ve read in years! Bravo my friend!
“The only open question, and it is the largest question in British public life even though it appears in no manifesto, is whether these adaptations are designed or suffered. Whether they arrive by foresight, on our terms, over decades, or by crisis, on the market’s terms, in months.
History says crisis. History is usually right. But not always. There is a version of this country that treats the Inversion the way it once treated the threat of invasion, as a fact that reorganises everything, that dissolves the luxury of the old quarrels, that makes the impossible reforms merely necessary.”
The sad Truth I fear is nobody will listen, and certainly not mobilize, but based on your clarity, hopefully I am wrong about that.
That said, there is a once in a generation move that can change many of these fundamentals. Not population age of course, but we can structure a major $500b capital investment that invests in Infrastructure, financing strategic investment into re-industrialization that delivers long term lower cost (green) energy which is the backbone of future GDP growth, AND, stop excess capital from getting stuck in real estate, which is siphoning off earnings and making every other problem harder to solve.
As soon as we say this is critical, and hopefully agree, the political arguments start about who will pay for it. And the answer to that is also once in a lifetime solution that cannot be repeated, but can delver the capital needed, and follows these restrictions:
1. No increase in taxes.
2. No new increase in debt.
3. No cuts or decrease to current spending.
4. No net increase in the money supply.
5. Non-inflationary.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not, it’s math and accounting.
I am writing this up, because only someone who is an expert in the monetary system can see it today, which unfortunately there are not many since how the monetary system works is not taught in any major University in the U.K. or the U.S., but the short answer is, we delay the natural process where the Bank of England de-issues reserves, use them to back a new digital pound that invests info strategic infrastructure, then after we have held them long enough to be invested let them be de-issued later. It’s more elegant than this, but as soon as I can make it as simple and clear as possible, I will release an article explaining it in detail, maybe a day or two.
Stay tuned…
Here is my question for you. With those 5 preconditions above, do you believe the political parties can hear your persuasive argument and set aside their pet policies to come together and literally save the future of England?
Chicken little is alive and well, and at least 25% of the people simply do not vote for change, but do you believe in your heart of hearts that the majority unite?
I'll look forward to the piece. Fair warning that my hard money instincts say any mechanism satisfying all five of those conditions has the cost hidden somewhere in the plumbing, because it always does. But I'm happy to be surprised, and I'll read it fully when it's out.
To answer your question… sadly, no.
I've spent the best part of two decades since the GFC watching the direction of travel, and I've spoken to politicians and to people closer to the levers of power than me. Nothing suggests we get the designed version. The reasons stack… electoral arithmetic, the calibre of people politics now attracts, and the sheer scale of what needs doing. We've built a system that responds only to crisis. It cannot plan around a reality it finds electorally inconvenient, however visible that reality becomes.
And the arithmetic is the killer here, it has been for some time. The median voter is older, owns property, and is a net beneficiary of the current settlement. The capital trapped in real estate that you rightly identify is not a policy failure. It is the policy. It's where the electorate keeps its wealth, so no party wins power promising to unstick it, and none try. That's your answer on whether the majority unite… the majority are the settlement.
So no, I don't expect Westminster to hear the argument and rise to it. I should confess I've become somewhat blackpilled watching all this, so calibrate accordingly. But the blackpill has earned its keep for me. Assuming the worst has been my most accurate forecasting model, and politicians have spent those two decades stepping around the elephants in the room to tend their largely irrelevant pet projects.
The sliver of light is Friedman's old point… when the crisis arrives, what gets done depends on the ideas lying around. Nobody mobilises before the emergency, but worked-out, legible ideas are what get grabbed in the panic. That's partly why I write.
To borrow my own line back… the adaptation is coming either way. I just expect it to be suffered rather than designed, and as a result, the outcomes won’t be as good as they could be.
We definitely need to rebuild power, reservoirs and education to keep people useful and in the workforce for longer. Also adaptations to homes and the built environment - there are a lot of repeat visitors in the NHS that return time after time because their house is grossly unsuitable and it costs too much stress and time to move. The asset stripping of all the past years is coming back to haunt us and it will take a crisis to fix it because older people make up the largest cohort of the voting public.
This is a really important wake up call which describes the dying momentum of a social and economic order that has run out of fuel - metaphorically and actually.
I would argue that tinkering with the system is not in any way sufficient and we need to go back to basics. Not the Stone Age but a clear understanding of what is needed to sustain life.
At its most basic we only need to provide enough food, water and accommodation without degrading the planet for the population. Were this achieved (and no system has yet done this) the health levels would undoubtedly be much improved reducing a large proportion of the medical care that is needed to counter the effects of ignoring these basic needs.
Ageing of itself does not have to involve the long periods of ill-health that are increasingly the norm before the pharmaceutical industry releases its grip on our inert bodies. The abandonment of the cult of extending lifespan and the adoption of a life well-lived outlook would also reduce calls on the NHS and the burden of end of life care would be short and manageable within families.
Your focus on family remaining more of an extended unit I think correctly points to the value of closer communities and more local agency. The role of nation states - if they survive - will need to be much more about coordination and emergency support at home and in some form the liaison with other nation states.
War will only be a problem when there is still enough energy to prosecute one. The climate issues will eventually force countries to look inward to protect themselves and outward for cooperation which is not to deny the destruction that the period in between could cause.
We could of course try to meet this challenge but this requires a complete change in social and economic relations and (with apologies to the noble pig) some snouts are too far into the trough to see it or want it.
Great analysis. And we could add in climate emergency and biodiversity loss impacting on food systems. The need for complexity thinking has never been greater.
I think the shift from energy and materials abundance will be the defining characteristic of this new age we’re entering into. Maybe AI changes timelines somewhat, but I think some things are simply inescapable. A lot of what I write sits downstream of what Nate covers, but well aware our physical reality is going to come to the forefront over the coming years and decades. What a time to be alive.
Yes such a reversal from the culture we have learned from our fore fathers and mothers. I feel it is our duty to rewrite the expectations for our children. Hopefully in a less fearful way than it feels.
This reminds me of a piece of doomerism I wrote recently entitled "Do Panic!",
Although my piece focussed on AI and foreign policy, the conclusions were similar in that we are deeply fucked unless the ruling class gets a grip and institutes urgently needed reforms.
It's worth noting that most of Europe is struggling with the same problems of pensions, care and aging. I wod expect in the next decade for the UK to seek to be a reciprocal partner, if not an EU member and share in the new standardised procurement systems that are being built out. The Ukraine war showed just how insane it was to have multi different ammo, tanks and kit designs on the same battlefield. Make then interchangeable and scale!
I’m thinking about a future UK climate that ranges from -20 to +40c with creeping summer baselines, especially in cities, across the referenced time period. Won’t make any of the other stuff easier. I guess the care burden might be reduced by excess deaths in the non-working population. Whether the emotional ramifications of that assist national transformation or contribute to a sense of inevitable decline is hard to predict
Can't disagree, and sounds just up my doomer street. Yes, we can turn things around, or even recalibrate for a new world, but there is no appetite for the hard headed long term thinking needed. Most of the commentariat assume that a new PM with a warm glow and a bit of charm is all that is needed. I expect only a real crisis will concentrate minds.
Yeah agreed. Everyone seems to want their go on the money printer. It’s about their own special entry in the history books rather than actually doing the hard, thankless work of fixing things. Trouble now is, the tax take is likely at or beyond a maximum in terms of fiscal benefit. So we’re entering an era of taxation for ideological reasoning as opposed to raising revenue. CGT is a great example, HMRC have already said we’ll likely take less tax with a 10 point rise from here. But it won’t stop them from doing it.
Not sure if your doomscape covered ideology as a complicating factor. The ideologues in charge aren’t interested in a give and take discussion about fasting challenges together. They are convinced they are right, or worse, see a high tax low growth future as something desirable. Maybe out of the wreckage a fair society will emerge? I don’t know, but whatever it is, is terrifying.
I don’t have any major disagreements with your analysis. A couple of points: Inversion 3: the world - there appears to be an implicit assumption that the Trump approach will outlast him. It could go the other way and we could see a reassertion of a rules based international order of which China is a part. China tends to be reactive in its imposition of restrictions on exports of rare commodities etc. China has been more committed to free trade ( albeit with some dumping of eg EVs) than the capitalist west .The Chinese “ threat “ tends to be over played.
Inversion 5: The Peace - experience from recent & current wars suggests that drone and other remote weapons technologies are proving remarkably effective against conventional defence/war “ kit” so beloved of our generals and admirals ( who we still seem to have in abundance). Defence procurement programmes (eg the Ajax tank ) have been …err, less than well managed. Much of “ enemy ( Russian?) activity is focused on disruption to our information and communication systems , not traditional “ defence” spending.I’m not convinced by the “ let’s chuck more money at defence” argument.
However your overall argument that this is a new era, that it requires paradigm shifts (groan)in thinking and governance makes sense. You say:
“The common ingredients are worth stating: an honestly named emergency, a coalition wider than one party, and mechanisms deliberately placed beyond the reach of the annual political auction.” The conditions for these things to happen do not exist: there is no political incentive to re engineer the machine; it’s more politically rational to kick cans down the road ( eg Care policy , nuclear policy). In the absence of a collaborative political culture, it looks like change will end up being crisis driven ( which the British state is quite good at…).
I agree. I believe it’ll be crisis that dictates a change in order. And I fully expect a major fiscal crisis to hit in the short to medium term. Britain couldn’t be further from the conditions required to proactively fix the structural issues before us. So emergency measures it will be, and the sad thing is, the cost is always greater… not just financially, but in other things we give up in the process.
Outside of this analysis, in the private sector you can feel a turning of the tide. Things aren’t functioning as they need to. Energy is one thing, but there’s a deeper rot and I’ve seen it across so many industries now. This country may have growing unemployment and economic inactivity, but there’s also a big talent shortage. Something somewhere has broken badly. My fear is that we won’t have the platform to rebuild from as we’ve done through history.
Given the fractious years we likely have ahead, a lot can change. But on the current trajectory, I can’t help but feel we have an era of crisis and upheaval lying in wait, in all honesty, we’re already going through it. The frustration, as you probably recognised in the article, is it’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. The political levers available don’t appear to connect to anything and the people in the command centre are there for theatre, not to actually do anything.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for the comment.
Your longer point about immigration and demographics is correct, I think.
Immigration doesn’t solve anything in relation to an ageing population.
It (1) creates an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, in which ever-greater numbers of immigrants are required to support the previous wave as they age, and (2) irresponsibly kicks the can down the road, in the hope that our children can sort out an issue we weren’t imaginative or brave enough to solve ourselves.
On population decline overall, I’m not convinced that it’s such a terrible thing.
The British Empire was arguably at its peak in about 1880, when Britain’s population (excluding Ireland) was around 30 million. Consider how dynamic that population must have been, to construct an empire on which the sun never set. Today, the British population is close to double that number. Do raw numbers = dynamism? Clearly not.
It might be said that the population in 1880 was younger, on average, than today - and that’s true. But in 1880, being in your 50’s was seriously old; today most 50 somethings are still working and highly productive. Given the right incentives, they - and people in their 60’s and 70’s - could be much more productive still.
Consider also the Republic of Ireland, which has a population of about 8.2 million in 1841. Today the Irish population is still a million people lower than at its’s peak, but the Irish have never been as materially wealthy as today.
With AI and automation moving ahead quickly, our reliance on humans to do work will continue to decline.
Human capital is worth preserving for itself, I believe, and ideally we’d turn around the falling birthrates in developed countries by supporting parents - and honouring parenthood - better than we do now. But I don’t believe that a falling population is any kind of real economic problem, except for those who focus only on the limited measure of GDP as the yardstick for success.
What a clear sighted article re the issues we face. Thanks very much.
I think it’s really clear we have the wrong politicians for the issues we’ve faced:
1. May for Brexit was rubbish at negotiating and the remainer guerilla war in Parliament still leaves a taste for a lot of people ( I voted Remain BTW)
2. Boris for Covid (would have suited May)
3. Liz Truss with need for growth but crass remedy exploding the LDI bomb
4. Rishi - no hope given above
5. Starmer for Growth (“is our number one priority”) with a bunch of front / back bench MPs drawn from the Public sector more interested in the politics of sanctimony. None of them have business experience. Maxing borrowing (80% higher in 24-29 pre Labour coming to power) Tax and the size of the State is fixing spend & then hoping for growth exemplifies their lack of business / fiscal acumen.
6. This doesn’t change with Burnham unless he’s brave but more tax & socialism is not the answer. Growth is …
Your analysis re change only comes with crisis chimes with economists such as Liam Halligan who has been predicting a fiscal crisis ever since Labours first October 24 budget (note since then 30 year Gilts have been higher than the one day peak of Truss since then)
Your article has articulated very clearly the issues… but hasn’t strayed into the political. Which, if any, of the Political Parties are best equipped to deal with these issues and articulate/ address the trade-offs either before or after, a crisis? The Tories have form on this obviously.
Note that if we have a crisis it will be in all likelihood a technocratic Government imposed externally - the lessons of Greece are very sobering. Do you see authoritarianism as one potential outcome in the UK, be it left or right in response to a zero sum game where lots of people “lose”…
Spectacular!
The most important article I’ve read in years! Bravo my friend!
“The only open question, and it is the largest question in British public life even though it appears in no manifesto, is whether these adaptations are designed or suffered. Whether they arrive by foresight, on our terms, over decades, or by crisis, on the market’s terms, in months.
History says crisis. History is usually right. But not always. There is a version of this country that treats the Inversion the way it once treated the threat of invasion, as a fact that reorganises everything, that dissolves the luxury of the old quarrels, that makes the impossible reforms merely necessary.”
The sad Truth I fear is nobody will listen, and certainly not mobilize, but based on your clarity, hopefully I am wrong about that.
That said, there is a once in a generation move that can change many of these fundamentals. Not population age of course, but we can structure a major $500b capital investment that invests in Infrastructure, financing strategic investment into re-industrialization that delivers long term lower cost (green) energy which is the backbone of future GDP growth, AND, stop excess capital from getting stuck in real estate, which is siphoning off earnings and making every other problem harder to solve.
As soon as we say this is critical, and hopefully agree, the political arguments start about who will pay for it. And the answer to that is also once in a lifetime solution that cannot be repeated, but can delver the capital needed, and follows these restrictions:
1. No increase in taxes.
2. No new increase in debt.
3. No cuts or decrease to current spending.
4. No net increase in the money supply.
5. Non-inflationary.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not, it’s math and accounting.
I am writing this up, because only someone who is an expert in the monetary system can see it today, which unfortunately there are not many since how the monetary system works is not taught in any major University in the U.K. or the U.S., but the short answer is, we delay the natural process where the Bank of England de-issues reserves, use them to back a new digital pound that invests info strategic infrastructure, then after we have held them long enough to be invested let them be de-issued later. It’s more elegant than this, but as soon as I can make it as simple and clear as possible, I will release an article explaining it in detail, maybe a day or two.
Stay tuned…
Here is my question for you. With those 5 preconditions above, do you believe the political parties can hear your persuasive argument and set aside their pet policies to come together and literally save the future of England?
Chicken little is alive and well, and at least 25% of the people simply do not vote for change, but do you believe in your heart of hearts that the majority unite?
Thanks Jon, glad it landed with you.
I'll look forward to the piece. Fair warning that my hard money instincts say any mechanism satisfying all five of those conditions has the cost hidden somewhere in the plumbing, because it always does. But I'm happy to be surprised, and I'll read it fully when it's out.
To answer your question… sadly, no.
I've spent the best part of two decades since the GFC watching the direction of travel, and I've spoken to politicians and to people closer to the levers of power than me. Nothing suggests we get the designed version. The reasons stack… electoral arithmetic, the calibre of people politics now attracts, and the sheer scale of what needs doing. We've built a system that responds only to crisis. It cannot plan around a reality it finds electorally inconvenient, however visible that reality becomes.
And the arithmetic is the killer here, it has been for some time. The median voter is older, owns property, and is a net beneficiary of the current settlement. The capital trapped in real estate that you rightly identify is not a policy failure. It is the policy. It's where the electorate keeps its wealth, so no party wins power promising to unstick it, and none try. That's your answer on whether the majority unite… the majority are the settlement.
So no, I don't expect Westminster to hear the argument and rise to it. I should confess I've become somewhat blackpilled watching all this, so calibrate accordingly. But the blackpill has earned its keep for me. Assuming the worst has been my most accurate forecasting model, and politicians have spent those two decades stepping around the elephants in the room to tend their largely irrelevant pet projects.
The sliver of light is Friedman's old point… when the crisis arrives, what gets done depends on the ideas lying around. Nobody mobilises before the emergency, but worked-out, legible ideas are what get grabbed in the panic. That's partly why I write.
To borrow my own line back… the adaptation is coming either way. I just expect it to be suffered rather than designed, and as a result, the outcomes won’t be as good as they could be.
My proposal is out now…
I’ll give it a read.
We definitely need to rebuild power, reservoirs and education to keep people useful and in the workforce for longer. Also adaptations to homes and the built environment - there are a lot of repeat visitors in the NHS that return time after time because their house is grossly unsuitable and it costs too much stress and time to move. The asset stripping of all the past years is coming back to haunt us and it will take a crisis to fix it because older people make up the largest cohort of the voting public.
This is a really important wake up call which describes the dying momentum of a social and economic order that has run out of fuel - metaphorically and actually.
I would argue that tinkering with the system is not in any way sufficient and we need to go back to basics. Not the Stone Age but a clear understanding of what is needed to sustain life.
At its most basic we only need to provide enough food, water and accommodation without degrading the planet for the population. Were this achieved (and no system has yet done this) the health levels would undoubtedly be much improved reducing a large proportion of the medical care that is needed to counter the effects of ignoring these basic needs.
Ageing of itself does not have to involve the long periods of ill-health that are increasingly the norm before the pharmaceutical industry releases its grip on our inert bodies. The abandonment of the cult of extending lifespan and the adoption of a life well-lived outlook would also reduce calls on the NHS and the burden of end of life care would be short and manageable within families.
Your focus on family remaining more of an extended unit I think correctly points to the value of closer communities and more local agency. The role of nation states - if they survive - will need to be much more about coordination and emergency support at home and in some form the liaison with other nation states.
War will only be a problem when there is still enough energy to prosecute one. The climate issues will eventually force countries to look inward to protect themselves and outward for cooperation which is not to deny the destruction that the period in between could cause.
We could of course try to meet this challenge but this requires a complete change in social and economic relations and (with apologies to the noble pig) some snouts are too far into the trough to see it or want it.
Great analysis. And we could add in climate emergency and biodiversity loss impacting on food systems. The need for complexity thinking has never been greater.
I think the shift from energy and materials abundance will be the defining characteristic of this new age we’re entering into. Maybe AI changes timelines somewhat, but I think some things are simply inescapable. A lot of what I write sits downstream of what Nate covers, but well aware our physical reality is going to come to the forefront over the coming years and decades. What a time to be alive.
Yes such a reversal from the culture we have learned from our fore fathers and mothers. I feel it is our duty to rewrite the expectations for our children. Hopefully in a less fearful way than it feels.
Are you familiar with Nate Hagens and The Great Simplification?
Yes I’ve been following him for a while
Now. I find his personal acceptance of the change calming.
This reminds me of a piece of doomerism I wrote recently entitled "Do Panic!",
Although my piece focussed on AI and foreign policy, the conclusions were similar in that we are deeply fucked unless the ruling class gets a grip and institutes urgently needed reforms.
https://pontifex.substack.com/p/do-panic
It's worth noting that most of Europe is struggling with the same problems of pensions, care and aging. I wod expect in the next decade for the UK to seek to be a reciprocal partner, if not an EU member and share in the new standardised procurement systems that are being built out. The Ukraine war showed just how insane it was to have multi different ammo, tanks and kit designs on the same battlefield. Make then interchangeable and scale!
I’m thinking about a future UK climate that ranges from -20 to +40c with creeping summer baselines, especially in cities, across the referenced time period. Won’t make any of the other stuff easier. I guess the care burden might be reduced by excess deaths in the non-working population. Whether the emotional ramifications of that assist national transformation or contribute to a sense of inevitable decline is hard to predict