In our local open markets here, you can buy fresher in smaller quantities cheaper than you can buy two-for-one offers in the supermarkets. But still, the price you pay is silly.

That’s not because the stallholders are ripping you off (although without doubt, the cheese vendeurs rip the tourists off bigtime); rather, it’s because they too have to pay far too much in terms of everything from local taxes via petrol prices to cinema tickets.

You can spot the inequilibrium when visiting so-called vides greniers (the French equivalent of boot sales) where as often as not there are some local residents flogging their excess produce. The prices are a fraction of “normality”. This is because there are at least four bits missing compared to mainstream sales: (1) transport costs (2) greed (3) seller taxes (4) health and safety regulations.

There is something in the dysfunctional wiring of our species that thinks big is good. Examples of this less than perfect idea include The Tower of Babel, The Titanic, and Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose.

Considerably more useful inventions (in context) were the Spitfire, the Bouncing bomb, the transistor, and the silicone chip.

On the other hand, the biggest invention of our age – the internet – has destroyed thousands of business models and millions of jobs. I remain unconvinced that (so far) the world wide web has transformed our lives for the better.

The usual outcome of Big is process – ridiculously complex procedures that obfuscate achievement while confusing those who study it. The normal outcome of Small is creativity: elegant ideas that dump the previous metier in favour of lower-cost directly-delivered advantage.

Small is better for the local community, less wasteful when it comes to energy resources, a preferable alternative to expensive imports, regenerative in artistic terms, and capable of being sold with a fraction of the anti-pilfer packaging that typifies so much of what we consume today.

I remain at a loss to understand why short-journey trade is seen as neolithic compared to huge volumes being delivered Just-in-Time from thousands of miles away….within which system admin, energy costs, local taxes, import tariffs, property maintenance and staff till occupiers all multiply the cost of delivery many times over.

Mutual communiitarianism is miles away from being fluffy fantasy: on the contrary, it offers a militarily safer alternative to globalist mercantilism, delivering a better balanced system under which meticulous skills are protected from mass-produced shit.

We must hope that small comes out on top.