So I guess the question is, if not techno-feudalism, then what do you see on the post-capitalist horizon?

Well, barbarity in the sense of environmental collapse causing essentially a breakdown of social structures and quite a bit of chaos, anarchy, violence, etc.

I mean, I know it sounds very pessimistic, but to me, given the present course that we are on, that seems the most likely outcome.

Because what is unrealistic in my view about saying we've entered a new mode of production is assuming that the basis of productivity is stable and safe enough that it's going to survive for decades and centuries to come.

When Marx talks about a mode of production, he tends to think of something that has at least a good number of centuries of staying power in it.

I mean if you look at ancient slave-based economic activity, the medieval feudal agrarian mode of production with its landed aristocracy and rent, etc., and then of course the rise of capitalism and of course its emergence especially in the guise of industrial capitalism – I mean, these were all like large slices of history that stretched out over centuries.

And so to talk about us as moving into a new mode of production brings with it this unspoken optimistic assumption that I think is incorrect, which is that the Earth will continue to enable us to produce in a way that will generate, whether it's the annual average global growth that capitalism requires or a sufficient amount of rent extraction for the oligarchs or landlords of – virtual landlords of big tech – I don't think that we have that much time left before, you know, that literally just the physical environment and the material resources just won't be able to sustain us in continuing to pursue something that is either capitalist or as post-capitalist is as rapacious in terms of the generation of accumulable wealth for the elites.

And the other thing comes back to what you said about your books, but I don't know if that's a solution or not, but does that mean, is that an impetus to keep writing and keep publishing because we need our thoughts and our, you know, more Marxism, et cetera, to be fed into these open source AI language things? Yeah.

Can you give us any sort of further examples? And also, if you like, are there half a dozen measurements that inclusive innovation ecosystems really do need to use when they're putting together their policies and priorities? Yeah.

Yeah, another great question, David.

It's really based off a piece of work that we've been doing the last couple of years.

When I was previously with Catalyst, our entrepreneurial ecosystem, we were challenged as an organization.

How do we know the work that we're doing is making an impact? And it gives back the definition of what is impact, right? And everybody could talk about GVA, right? We could all talk about economic growth.

We could talk about patents.

We could talk about AP generation, all that great stuff.

So what can ICB and what can the city-region deal do to ensure some form of spatial equity and... sort of territorial reach to ensure that there isn't other types of gaps and disadvantages being created?