2. How a transition actually happens

Degrowth (Kallis, Hickel, Saito, Malm) supplies a diagnosis he finds persuasive; missing is the mechanics: how to get from here to a society living within limits, gradually or suddenly, without catastrophe. Useful work is the transition, not the destination.

• Frame of the present: macro-view, "an age of crisis, not a crisis" (debt, resources, fossil/climate; storms and interludes), with deglobalisation as a fourth he expects but which is not yet clearly emergent (revised 2026-10-26). Revised 2026-10-26: deglobalisation was a fourth crisis until trade data contradicted it and James dropped it on 2026-10-11; see macro-view.. Many current-era tools and institutions will be useful on the far side.
• Ostrom as a manual for transition: communities governing fisheries, forests, irrigation for centuries without privatisation or the state; design features include clear boundaries, rules made by those affected, cheap dispute resolution, graduated sanctions.
• His own idea, "minimum necessary legibility" (from James C. Scott's legibility): a commons readable enough to its members to be governed, opaque enough to outsiders to resist capture. See commons.
• Most developed piece: the Britain essays, british-political-economy, first essay on food (uk-food-security-findings); Hormuz 2026 as a live test; aim is agenda-setting on the Beveridge model.
• Question he keeps asking: have we collectively given up on climate, soil, forests, extinction? He hasn't.

Open: the mechanics of transition; whether Ostrom's conditions can be built rather than inherited; whether the macro frame holds.

Live: one of his open threads. Re-check with James before relying on it.

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Open questions from his notes

• "To imagine the future is partly to normalize it" (October 2025, https://exitmusic.world/to-imagine-the-future-is-partly-to-normalize-it): how can we imagine what is coming and prepare for it while refusing its normalisation? What does survival look like, what are the moral parameters of these futures, and what is right action when all hope is lost?
• Mutual care rather than production as the basis of the economy: see porous-community (https://exitmusic.world/learning-to-need-each-other).
• The transition will be "complex and messy", using parts of the old system against others (writing-from-inside, https://exitmusic.world/a-meditation-on-tech-workers-predicament-and-their-role-in-the-coming).

Source: James's notes at exitmusic.world (read 2026-10-26); his own position, disposition stated.

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From departurein.place

• Post-collapse reorganisation (post-Roman, post-Han, post-Gupta, Dark Age Greece) as evidence that collapse is "transformation across space and time": dip-book-outline-2025 chapter 5 (https://departurein.place/departure-in-place-an-outline-for-a-wildly-ambitious-book/).
• The progress/collapse duopoly as a memetic trap, chapter 1 of the same outline.
• Practice rather than a transition roadmap: practice-not-planning (https://departurein.place/learning-to-need-each-other/).

Provenance: james-open-threads.md, uploaded by James 2026-10-11, assembled from his own descriptions, autumn 2026 (unverified). Disposition: live.

Related: degrowth, macro-view, commons, british-political-economy, civilizational-transition, thread-convivial-computation