Peter Smith

  The Anatomy of a Coming Collapse: Why the 18-Year Cycle Points to a 2026 Meltdown The global economy is currently navigating treacherous waters. While headlines are dominated by the potential bursting of AI bubbles, geopolitical tensions in Taiwan, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, a deeper, more systemic process is at work. According to renowned economic commentator Fred Harrison, these events are merely “shrouding” a fundamental cycle that has predicted every major downturn for decades: the 18-year business cycle. The Illusion of the Trigger We often look for a single event to blame for an economic crash. If Silicon Valley investment in AI collapses, or if international trade stalls due to new conflicts, politicians and the media will point to these as the cause. However, these are often just the “trigger points”—the final card that causes a house of cards to tumble. The real cause of the impending crash is more structural. It lies in how a nation’s income is distributed ove...

Introduction: The Secret Cheat Code to a Better Planet Let’s be honest, trying to fix the world feels a bit like trying to put out a house fire with a water pistol. Everywhere you look, there’s a fresh disaster: grinding poverty, eye-watering inequality, an environmental crisis that makes sci-fi dystopias look optimistic, and conflicts that never seem to end. It’s enough to make you want to crawl back into bed and wait for the apocalypse. But what if there was a cheat code? A single, elegant solution to our biggest problems that has been hiding in plain sight for over a century? It turns out that the root cause of our collective misery isn’t human nature, political ideology, or a lack of good intentions. It’s the way we handle the most basic resource of all: land. This guide will reveal the shockingly simple fix for this fundamental flaw. Let’s explore how one small change can lead to a world with affordable homes, thriving natural habitats, an end to poverty, and a genuine shot at las...

By Peter Smith For most of my adult life, I have worked to protect and restore nature. I have helped buy nature reserves, reintroduced lost species, and pioneered rewilding projects in the UK long before the word became fashionable. I have seen ecosystems recover with astonishing speed when given half a chance. And yet, despite all this effort, nature continues to decline. For decades, we’ve been told that we must recycle more, consume less, change our behaviour, or fund yet another conservation scheme. But after more than half a century of warnings, biodiversity is still collapsing, carbon emissions are still rising, and the living systems we depend upon are being eroded. This is not because we don’t care. It’s because we are treating a systemic problem with piecemeal solutions. Life Is a System, Not a Collection of Parts Nature is not just animals and plants. It is soil, water, air, energy flows, and the intricate relationships between them. Life emerges when these elements are allow...

  Eating Our Children The Inheritance of Loss: How a Stolen Birthright is Bankrupting Our Future We live in an age of searing contradiction. Our powers of production are unimaginable, our capacity to generate wealth unprecedented. Yet this golden age of progress is stalked by a deepening shadow: entrenched poverty, a yawning wealth gap, and the gnawing anxiety of economic instability. Here lies the great enigma of our time: how can destitution not only persist but fester in the very centres of immense wealth? Mainstream economics, blinded by orthodoxy, has no good answer. This essay contends the paradox is no accident, but the direct result of a foundational injustice: the private theft of  economic rent . This system treats our common inheritance—the earth—as a private monopoly, severing the link between work and reward. It institutionalises a parasitic ‘free riding’, allowing a privileged few to reap where they have not sown. In doing so, it preys upon the prosperity, securi...