Themes
Fiction Lab / Theme
Resource bottlenecks
How control over one scarce dependency redistributes power throughout a wider network.
Why it matters
Local optimisation around a bottleneck can create system-wide fragility, political leverage and distorted incentives.
Recurring mechanisms
1
Concentration of control over a critical input
2
Incentives to preserve scarcity
3
Weak substitutes and costly switching
Discussion prompt
Who benefits from the constraint, who absorbs the risk and who can redesign the dependency?