Local providers will be bypassed in favour of large, online stores, eventually disappearing as large stores increased in size, he says. The trend of buying goods over the Internet will lead to the death of city centres, with associated social problems. The small store's predicament served as an analogy for smaller countries in Thimbleby's vision. Countries were thinking too small, he says. The danger is not the larger countries, but the large corporations that they are home to, he says.
Many large corporations are larger than many countries, with incomes larger than many counties GDPs.
Failing to perceive the threat from global big business, countries such as Australia and the UK are overly concerned with controlling the flow of people in and out of the country. He says that in the Internet age, they should focus on controlling the flow of money and information instead. Our nations are keen on their territorial boundaries. While it is relatively difficult for most people to move around the world, it is extremely easy for large nations to move money between counties, Thimbleby says. This will enable investors in multinational corporations to change national legislation they perceived as against their interests.