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Detroit represents the future of most of the world’s cities.

With the automation of the Industrial Revolution, there is no requirement for a dense population of workers to live in close proximity to their workplace.

Cities are useful politically for maintaining a hive of compliant voters who will reliably support a political class that promises them (note that the political class does not have to reliably deliver) free stuff at the expense of the productive members of society.

The entire world is now catastrophically broke from government spending, deficits, and debt. Of the $1,400 Trillion that nominally represents the “wealth” of the world, more than $780 Trillion represents government debt backed derivatives and by design, you would be hard pressed to find the “original note” for most of them.

De facto, we have had a one world government of kleptocratic mediocrity since at least 1992. The problem is that John Maynard Keynes and Franklin Delano Roosevelt are both long dead, and the “long run” that Roosevelt warned Keynes about is now a clear and immediate danger.

The governments of the world will continue to create ones and zeros in their financial systems to continue to give stuff to their supporters, but the created money has become orders of magnitude less valuable and less effective.

Capital must be paid. Few of those who are in actual physical possession of the world’s raw materials and those people that turn them into finished goods actually live in cities. When they realize that the rapidly depreciating value of the currencies they are being paid in does not cover the real and exponentially growing risks and costs of bringing their products to market in cities, they will abandon the cities as markets.

The game is over. Elvis has left the building, and the house lights are coming back on. In the world’s cities, all hell is about to break loose.

Consider that there would be no immigration problem in Europe or the United States if the governments did not give the immigrants free stuff.

Governments will continue to legislate and regulate not realizing that they are pouring nitroglycerine on the fire of their own destruction. At some point, due to the increasing heat, a government will make a mistake and rather heavily handed drop the nitroglycerine causing a detonation rather than continued combustion.

Economists call that a “crash.”

The only way to avoid it would be for the citizens to cut the size of their governments at all levels to 25% of their current size and use the surplus tax revenues to pay off the government debt over the next four to five decades. That will never happen, and therefore Detroit is the future of every city.

The current “political class” will become extinct because they are unproductive and will be unable to provide for themselves.

A new political class will arise, usually a thugocracy based on those who are the strongest and most ruthless.

It is unlikely that any new political entity would have the benefit of the enlightened servant leadership demonstrated by our Founding Fathers in creating this Republic.