Too Big Will Fail

Irrespective of the referendum result in September, one thing is certain: Scotland is going to change markedly over the years and decades ahead. Independent or not, the future we're about to participate in is a daunting, mostly unanticipated journey wreathed in uncertainty.

Right now Scotland is being carried, along with all the other nations of the world, on a roller-coaster train of globalisation that reached its summit a few years ago with the advent of the all-time maximum in global conventional oil production. Where we are now is the long, surreal pause before the steep dive – what feels like a moment out of time while politicians and bankers mash on a brake pedal of “creative” finance in a bid to hold us at our precarious position in perpetuity. They will not succeed. Like gravity, history can not be opposed as it takes us where it will.

Globalisation, a term that saw its introduction in the 1980s to describe our increasingly complex international systems of trade and finance, is a feature of the modern world that now finds itself with a surprisingly close sell-by date. With a plentiful, growing supply of cheap oil to fuel it, the twentieth century saw a massive increase in global interconnectedness. The world's shipping lanes were transformed into a mammoth and dizzying network of conveyor belts for the transport of raw materials and finished goods. Only the economics of growth made it possible for seafood caught in Scotland to be sent to China for processing, then be sent to supermarket shelves right back where it came from.

Expensive oil causes that convenient but ludicrous system to break down. The 2008 financial crash, coming as it did suspiciously hot on the heels of the 2005/6 peak in conventional oil production, brought with it a steep drop in the volume of global trade. Fleets of cargo ships found themselves with nowhere to go and no freight to carry.

Ghost fleet of idle cargo ships near Singapore, 2008/9.

Since then, the financial contortionists in exchanges, banks and governments around the world have managed to keep the wheels on the system via injections of pretend money. Simultaneously, unconventional oil sources have filled in the growing gap in energy availability. The result has been a slow, patchy recovery at the top of the energy arc – the last few metres of gently sloping track before the plunge. The next oil shock of shortages and soaring prices will be the tipping point that heralds in that fall. When it happens it's 2008 to the nth power, and this time there may be precious little recovery, if any, as the banks find themselves with nothing left in their armoury of monetary wizardry to attempt to patch things up. We'll find ourselves in a rapidly de-globalised world – a world that no longer does big.

A breakdown of this magnitude is not one in which large, complex enterprises will be able to survive. Economic paralysis on a global scale kills small companies first - supply chains fail, and the larger entities at the top of the food chain will struggle to find replacements to fill the gaps. Ultimately, the house of cards comes down. Cumbersome, bureaucratic governments, reliant on the private sector for many of their services, will likely disintegrate with it.

The UK government is just such an a lumbering dinosaur. Westminster reveals itself everyday as a pompous anachronism of tedious tradition, stale ideas and cruel policies. Riddled with cronyism and corruption, it is unfit to lead any part of the British isles, let alone Scotland. There is little evidence that they are willing in any way to prepare the country for the kind of future we're entering – a future the likely nature of which they themselves must be all too aware of. They ignore it for any number of possible reasons (a subject for a future post), but the net result will be a population shocked by the accelerating rate of failure of institutions, services and infrastructure as the years progress. As the government grows more inept and sinks deeper into irrelevancy by the day, it will be up to us to take responsibility for ourselves and our well-being.

Freed from Westminster, an independent Scotland could arrive in the nick of time to address the issues of a de-globalising world. With a clean slate and a chance to re-imagine itself, a smaller, nimbler country unburdened by big-state delusions of grandeur will fare better on the road leading to re-localisation of everyday life. We need to start changing everything we do to a local, sustainable level; from food production to transport, health care and employment, energy production, finance and commerce. It would be infinitely preferable to have access to all the levers of statehood to do so, while also having the advantage of a relatively small geographical area to administer in an increasingly expensive age of constraints on fuel and energy.

Not ideal will be a No vote, leaving the oppressive weight of Westminster still on our backs. Although in time it may implode, or slowly become more remote and unimportant to us as everyday living gets harder and new local systems of government try to fill the voids it leaves, it will serve only as a hindrance in the early years of global decline. We can't afford to waste time with it or share the noose it has placed around its neck with its refusal to realistically prepare for the years to come.