Modern cities—and especially East Asia’s modern megacities—are particularly screwed. All only exist because the Order has made it easy for them both to source the building blocks of industrialized systems as well as to access end markets for their exports. Remove the global system, remove global transport, and cities will be responsible for their own food and energy and industrial inputs. That is, in a word, impossible. Only cities that are part of a bloc with sufficient reach can hope to keep populations employed, fed, and warm. For most of the global urban population, this leads to the same
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