Re-thinking

You know when something really serious in happening when wilful blindness goes centre stage.

I notice this morning that the CBI is lobbying for people to be made to go back to their offices so that the service industry that supported those offices can survive.

That has something of the same logic as buggy whip manufacturers trying to stop the development of the automotive industry at the beginning of the last century. Or the vision that said the world would never need more than five computers (Thomas Watson, IBM president 1943) or that  "Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr Epstein" (Decca's Dick Rowe 1962)

We feel a certain sense of unfairness when the future doesn't match our predictions, or the neat models we've created of how the world works fail to keep up with reality, and reality is what we're facing.

Our reality right now is that:

• We produce far, far more than we need in search of continuing growth.

• Perpetual economic growth is a clear fallacy - like perpetual motion.

• Much of what …