Thursday
The great migratory wave from the countryside to the cities began in the U.K. with the Industrial Revolution. By the early 19th century it had built up a head of steam that didn’t stop – until now.
For about two hundred years, the cities got larger and larger. Gradually, as farming became more mechanised and less labour-intensive, the countryside became depopulated. Facilitating that were the industries (with jobs) that sprang up in and around the cities. Oft-times, where those industries were located led to villages becoming cities.
During the 20th century, restaurants, cafes, bars, nightclubs, theatres, cinemas, museums, galleries and myriad other forms of city entertainment attracted huge numbers of people, which then attracted more businesses. Eventually the trend of moving to the suburbs reversed and people began to return and live in what were now mega-cities. They occupied apartments in huge sky-rises with ghastly views of other sky-rises. That led to even more city businesses – gyms, doctors, supermarkets, hairdressers, chemists etc.
Acting as a counter-force to this seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of ever-expansionary ‘progress’ was an economy that was stalling. It had slowly, incrementally, been regulated beyond the point of viability. It was no longer possible to either tighten belts or raise prices to pay for the ever-growing excesses of government. The belts were down to the final hole and disposable income, and faith in the future, had sunk too low.
Then, this slow-motion collapse of the economy was dramatically sped up by the hysterical WuFlu lockdown. Despite what our cretinous governments believe, economies do not have functioning Pause/Start buttons. ‘Pause’ works fine, but the ‘Start’ button is in the hands of individual business people and entrepreneurs, not politicians. When ‘Start’ didn’t work, governments pressed ‘Borrow’. Ah, jolly good, that still works – but not for much longer. If it were possible to borrow money forever, then Venezuela and Zimbabwe would still be prosperous countries.
Borrowing is possible for only so long as the lenders are confident of repayment. For how much longer can the US continue to borrow from the bond market when it already has a higher percentage of debt than Greece when it had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF? Once the markets come to understand that they are lending to deadbeats who are borrowing to pay interest, not principal, then the jig is up.
When the debt collapses, then all those debt notes that people use as money will go to zero value. We will have to begin again, with real money. The ‘Times of Gold’ referenced by the name of this website refers to the future, not the past.
There really will be a Great Reset, but it will be performed by the markets, not by the bloviating Billy Gates and Prince Charlies of the world. The airy-fairy, dick-headed dilettantes of the World Economic Forum will need to pull up their drawbridges to keep the furious pitchfork waving peasants out.
The future of cities is bleakly dystopian – grim with the threat of lawlessness, filth and disease. It won’t happen overnight, but the journey has begun. One of the great tides of history has turned. Governments will focus their efforts to ‘kick-start’ the economy in the cities. They will come up with ‘Five Year Plans’, infrastructure boondoggles and assorted other big government, small brain, ideas.
Their focus will ensure that cities are never given the freedom to recover. Governments truly are the problem, not the solution. People build civilizations; governments destroy them.
If there is to be a recovery from the coming collapse, it will begin in those places where governments will shrink to invisibility – in the small country towns. They will be forced, by their isolation and the unaffordability of fuel, if it even exists, to become self-sufficient again. Long closed shops will be re-opened. Business will be sparse and no one will become wealthy, other than in a relative sense, but that won’t be the game. The game will be that most basic of games – survival. Some will survive better than others. No one will be fat, no one will grow flowers and no one will worry about pronouns. Sexual deviants will return to the shadows and women who want a man to look after them (all of them) will begin to have children again. Those children will grow up asking about the functions that the unused taps and power points once performed. They won’t believe the answers. We won’t even try to explain what the internet once was.
The primary business will be what it has always been in all societies, but which has not been obvious for a century or so – growing food. Agriculture will return to being labour intensive. Country life will be harsh and unremitting, but it will be Nirvana compared to the cities.
When the Great Reset happens, it’s true that we’ll have nothing, but it’s not true that we’ll be happy. But, once we have mastered the new life, we’ll do what men have always done. Look to the horizon, look to our children, and plant the seeds that will bear fruit in a future that we will not live long enough to know, but which we can envisage.
Hopefully, we and our descendants will be able to create faster than governments can destroy. For that is the formula behind any new civilization anywhere.