The End of the Era of Lightness: The State Disciplines the Market and Returns to Concrete

The Renaissance of Hard Infrastructure. Dreams of silent, green railways collided this week with technological reality. On the grounds of the Leipzig/Halle airport, construction is starting on a factory that seems to defy the climate trends of the last decade. German manufacturer Deutsche Aircraft is betting on the D328eco model – a turboprop machine for forty passengers. This decision does not stem from sentiment, but from cold calculation presented by Professor Hartmut Fricke from the Dresden University of Technology. Classic flights with large jets have ceased to be profitable, and the alternative in the form of rail has lost its key asset: reliability.

The impotence of the railways is clearly visible a few dozen kilometers away. Deutsche Bahn will only restore the full schedule on the key Magdeburg-Berlin route in March 2026. For half a year, a massive transport system was paralyzed by a fire at a single signal box in Gerwisch. The repair required coupling systems from Biederitz and Möser, demonstrating the fragile nature of the infrastructure that Europe took for granted. The return to regional flights, mentioned by manager Sebastian Böhnl, is in essence a market vote of no confidence in the efficiency of ground transport. Business chooses CO2 emissions over the risk of being late.

Parallel to infrastructure problems, the state is launching an unprecedented attack on the business model of the digital economy. In Milan, the prosecutor's office has placed the Italian branch of Deliveroo under judicial control. Investigators revealed a mechanism where cost optimization took the form of systemic exploitation, referred to as caporalato.

The numbers are staggering: 20,000 couriers worked for rates of around 3.77 euros per delivery. This amount is 90% lower than the poverty threshold. The prosecutor's office is expanding the investigation to giants such as McDonald's, Burger King, and Esselunga, sending a clear signal: profit generated by an app does not exempt one from responsibility for the person who delivers that profit by bicycle. The algorithm has ceased to be a shield protecting against the labor code.

A similar scenario is playing out in Tokyo. The Japanese Fair Trade Commission (FTC) conducted a raid on the offices of Microsoft Japan. The allegations concern monopolistic practices surrounding the Azure cloud and blocking competition. In a country where the market is dominated by powerful keiretsu conglomerates, the regulator's intervention in the technology of the American giant marks the end of the era of digital laissez-faire. Nation-states have stopped treating Big Tech as partners and started treating them as entities to be formatted.

The years 2010-2020 were characterized by a belief in the self-regulation of digital markets and the inevitability of the green transport transformation. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis after 2022 exposed the weakness of supply chains and the illusidness of cheap money, forcing governments into more active interventionist policies.

Fiscal Sobriety. This turn toward realism is most evident in the United Kingdom. Chancellor Rachel Reeves, instead of a political show, presents only a dry update of forecasts in the House of Commons. She refuses to treat the autumn speech as an opportunity to hand out money, which is a radical break from the populism of previous years. Keir Starmer's government faces the threat of a £30 billion budget gap resulting from a decline in net immigration and lower tax revenues.

In the debate over Plan 2 type student loans, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson clash over the definition of fairness, but the background is mathematics. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns that without workers from abroad, the system will not balance. Reeves chooses boredom and predictability over fireworks, which in current times is an act of courage. „It is just a forecast, rather than a fiscal event like the budget.” — Rachel Reeves

The Costs of Stability. Critics of the current course may argue that returning to regional aircraft is ecological regression, and that excessive regulation in Japan or Italy will stifle innovation. They claim that the market itself would eliminate inefficient solutions, and that the prosecutor's interventions in the Deliveroo model will raise service prices for consumers. They point out that building a factory in Leipzig for fossil-fuel machines (even with the prospect of SAF) is a surrender in the fight for the climate.

However, this argument ignores a key fact: deregulation and faith in the „invisible hand” have led to a situation where trains do not run and workers are unable to support themselves. Innovation that relies on exploitation or monopoly is illusory. External costs – whether in the form of a damaged environment or an impoverished workforce – are ultimately borne by the state anyway. Regulatory intervention is not an assault on freedom, but a restoration of market gravity.

The future is painted in shades of gray concrete and legal paragraphs. A hybrid era awaits us: turboprop planes will fly where rail fails, but they will have to use sustainable fuels. Computing clouds will drive the economy, but under the dictates of antitrust offices. This is the end of romanticism in economics. What matters is what gets the passenger to their destination and what adds up in an Excel spreadsheet.

3.77 euros — average delivery rate revealed in the Deliveroo investigation

We can dream of teleportation and free energy, but at the end of the day, someone has to fix the switch near Magdeburg, and someone else has to pay tax in London. Reality has a way of always presenting the bill – usually with interest.