Today's headlines hum with the quiet revolution of electric vehicles, now outselling combustion engines in parts of Europe – a tipping point signalling not just technological shift, but a profound re-engineering of economic power. One observes how swiftly fortunes turn when the ground beneath an industry cracks, creating new titans in battery tech whilst leaving the old guard, quite literally, holding the oil barrel. This scramble for ascendancy and the shifting of the bill is strikingly familiar to the economic upheaval following the 1918 pandemic, when global disruption funneled wealth into new enterprises – from resourceful mail-order firms avoiding public interaction to opportunists profiting from essential goods amidst collapsed supply chains. Back then, as now, systemic reconfigurations always come with a price tag, often paid by the very people navigating the new normal, while new empires are quietly forged from the dust of the old.
Friday, 5 June 2026