Change the map of transport, or finance, or energy, or industrial materials, and the list of winners or losers will shift with it. That’s not a happy outcome for the loser, but it isn’t the end of the world. Unless it is. There is a difference—a big difference—between a rising price of access and an absolute lack of access. The first leads to an industrial hollowing out. The second leads to outright deindustrialization. Just as with energy, countries that lose access to the building blocks of modern industrial society do not just enter recession, they lose the capacity to play the game at all.
