The Second World War was won on the home front as well as the battlefield. As early as 1942, the British government pledged itself, as soon as the Nazis were defeated, to slaying “Five Giants on the road to reconstruction”: Disease, Want, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. This pledge boosted morale and provided the template for the postwar welfare state. A “revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching,” wrote William Beveridge, the Liberal grandee who wrote the government report that identified the giants.

Today we are involved in another war and another revolution: an undeclared war against the “axis of autocracy,” led by Russia and China, and a revolution driven by technological innovation. The Five Giants that Beveridge identified have largely been vanquished: Life expectancy across the West is about 20 years longer than it was in 1942. But new giants have emerged: giants that are more subtle than the old giants but no less fearsome. These giants explain why the West is gripped by such a sense of malaise despite relentless material progress and why its citizens’ confidence in the future is fading.

What are these new giants, and how can we defeat them?

Loneliness

More than a quarter of U.S. households consist of one person living alone: cat ladies and cave men. Many workers, particularly in the just-in-time economy, work alone as well as live alone. A quarter of U.S. 40-year-olds have never married, up from just 6% in 1970. Social isolation is bad for individuals, increasing the chances of premature death as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, but it is also bad for the species. The German fertility rate is just 1.35 children per woman and the South Korean rate is 0.7.

Addiction

Addiction is a growing problem thanks not only to a new generation of super drugs, such as fentanyl, but also to the skill of supposedly respectable companies in encouraging addictive behavior. Food companies are some of the leading culprits here, engineering their products with an irresistible blend of sugar, salt and fat. More than two in five Americans are obese. Digital companies design clever algorithms to keep us clicking and scrolling. Hence our third giant.

Distraction

The internet has become a distraction machine: Headlines blare, emails drop, special offers ping. But it is only one of many: 24-hour news programs feature “crawlers” that provide yet more information. Cars come with all-enveloping entertainment systems. Young people who were brought up in this buzzing new world find it difficult to concentrate for any length of time or perform complicated tasks. The so-called Flynn effect, whereby average IQ had been rising relentlessly for decades, has been showing signs of reversal since the turn of the century.

Lies

Lies are on the march as never before, thanks to a combination of technological innovation and information warfare. The internet giants are the first big broadcasters to be exempt from strict standards of truth or balance in what they publish. Hostile powers, particularly Russia, are using this free-for-all to inject lies, designed to inflame antagonisms or simply muddy the waters, into the bloodstream of democracy. This is eroding the bedrock of liberal democracy, informed debate.

Complexity

Complexity smothers everything, like Japanese knotweed. Passwords get convoluted. Forms get longer. Government departments get ever more Kafkaesque. Moses’ Ten Commandments have become Ten Billion Commandments, many of them contradictory. Complexity is deeply inegalitarian, acting as a tax on people with low IQs while creating jobs for lawyers; it’s also deeply anti-progress. Scientists devote their lives to making grant applications, or sitting on grant committees, while building companies devote more time to regulations than to pouring concrete.

These five giants support each other. Addiction holds hands with both Distraction and Loneliness, for example: Young people (particularly men) who are addicted to their screens retreat from society into the land of the infinite scroll. Collectively, they create a general sense of a world spinning out of control. We must slay our giants to restore a sense of agency and progress.

Governments need to fight on as many fronts as possible: Departments of agriculture need to think about their role in promoting addictive foodstuffs just as departments of education need to think about opening children’s eyes to information manipulation.

Four policies could produce outsized benefits:

Re-introduce national service

Offer school-leavers a choice between military service or voluntary service. National service would help to address both the division of society into social groups that have little to do with each other and the rising epidemic of loneliness. More than a million British 18- to 24-year-olds are neither in work nor in education, disconnected from society and wasting their lives in electronic distraction. Far-seeing (and Russia-facing) countries such as Sweden and Finland have already reintroduced national service.

Prioritize reading

Reading is the antidote to distraction because it obliges people to focus on a single text for a sustained period. (The great Austrian writer Stephan Zweig defined a book as a “handful of silence that assuages torment and unrest.”) Yet reading is a dying habit. Just 30% of Britons aged 8-18 say that they enjoy reading in their spare time, a 36% decrease since the reading survey began in 2005. Countries everywhere should do everything they can to reverse these trends, from pro-reading campaigns to a renewed focus on the written text in schools.

Tackle complexity

Governments should put their own houses in order by reducing their own addiction to complexity. This will involve taking on interest groups that thrive on complexity such as lawyers and bureaucratic jobs-worths. They should also force private sector companies to prioritize simplicity over complexity and intelligibility over gobbledygook. Governments have occasionally embraced this cause. Cass Sunstein put the reduction of “sludge” in the form of bureaucratic complexity at the heart of his work as head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2009-12. But complexity-busting needs to be a permanent government priority rather than an episodic enthusiasm.

Crack the whip at digital companies

Wherever you look — at the epidemic of lies or addiction or distraction — the digital companies are at the heart of it. The companies must be forced to deal with the social pollution that we are causing. Start by  repealing Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act which grants them limited federal immunity for what they publish online. They also need to be encouraged to side with the bright side rather than the dark side. AI gives us a great opportunity to tackle the giant Complexity. Algorithms can be adjusted to encourage concentration as well as distraction.

The public sector across the world can often seem bloated and inert. But that is not because it is populated entirely by jobsworths. It is because it is disconnected from the new challenges that trouble the world. Give the state sector a new set of giants to tackle — giants that touch and trouble us all — and it may well surprise us with its energy and zeal.

Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former writer at the Economist, he is author of “The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.”

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Pioneer Press staffers who cover the Vikings take a stab at predicting Sunday’s game against visiting Washington:

Dane Mizutani

Commanders 23, Vikings 13: Not sure we can pick the Vikings to win any game the rest of the way with how bad it’s gotten. At least they’ll score a touchdown this weekend.

Jace Frederick

Commanders 24, Vikings 21: Neither team should really want to win at this point, but Minnesota desperately needs a shred of offensive competence. Should find it against Washington’s defense.

John Shipley

Vikings 19, Commanders 17: This appears to be a reprieve for Minnesota, a home game against a team worse than they are. It’s hard to imagine either J.J. McCarthy or Max Brosmer playing well enough to capitalize, but if Jayden Daniels (elbow) remains sidelined, the Vikings’ defense should win this game.

Charley Walters

Vikings 21, Commanders 20: The Vikings are 4-8, Commanders 3-9. Sunday’s game has about the same appeal as an August preseason game.

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There was a lot of talk this week about the culture that Kevin O’Connell has worked hard to build in Minnesota.

It’s what the Vikings hired him in to do, and while O’Connell has championed the transformation in good times, he has done so with an understanding that the biggest test for the culture would come in bad times.

This recent stretch of futility might as well be the MCAT.

This is the first time the Vikings have vastly underperformed with O’Connell leading the charge. This was a roster designed to compete for the Super Bowl. It might actually be competing for a Top 5 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft by the end of this month.

The playoffs odds went out the window for the Vikings following last Sunday’s 26-0 loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

It’s left the Vikings playing for nothing more than pride when they host the Washington Commanders on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“We need to all respond the right way together,” O’Connell said. “We’ve got the leadership to do it.”

That statement starts and stops with Justin Jefferson.

As much as O’Connell deserves credit for the culture he has built, Jefferson could easily burn it to the ground if that’s what he wanted to do. That’s the hardest part about the buzzword so commonly used in sports: It doesn’t matter how good the culture is; it can never supersede the superstar.

The fact that Jefferson has continued to buy what O’Connell is selling amid the worst stretch of his career speaks volumes about who he is as a person. He’s everything the Vikings could ever hope for when it comes to their face of the franchise. That’s largely because of the way he carries himself on and off the field.

“He obviously wants to win,” O’Connell said. “He’s as competitive as anybody I’ve ever been around.”

That competitiveness hasn’t come at a cost, however, as Jefferson has never once gone out of his way to place blame on anybody else. But the frustration momentarily got the best of him when he declined comment after the Vikings were shut out by the Seahawks. Maybe because he didn’t want to say anything he knew he would regret. He was back at the podium this week vowing to keep it pushing.

“This season isn’t over,” Jefferson said. “I will never sit there and give up on this team and quit.”

That mentality is something the Vikings shouldn’t take granted. Especially considering that they have employed their fair share of outspoken superstars of the past couple of decades. It’s not hard to imagine Randy Moss or Stefon Diggs going nuclear right now if they were in Jefferson’s shoes.

It’s clear the Vikings miscalculated by thinking J.J. McCarthy was ready to pick up where Sam Darnold left off. Instead, the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft has proven to be a project, forced to re-learn the fundamentals of playing the position.

Not ideal for Jefferson considering he’s in the prime of his career and should be operating at the peak of his powers. This is a guy who has been on a trajectory that was pretty unprecedented since he was a rookie. He could potentially flirt with Jerry Rice’s seemingly untouchable records if he manages to stay healthy deep into his 30s.

Now he’s on pace for the lowest output of his career.

“You have to have a lot of patience,” Jefferson said. “We’re 4-8. That’s definitely difficult to go through. It’s definitely not exciting to lose games.”

A few minutes later, Jefferson was given yet another chance to roll McCarthy under the bus. He wouldn’t.

“I can’t say enough about him,” the young quarterback said. “You see a lot of receivers around the league be a Me Guy, and he’s not a Me Guy at all.”

That’s why the culture works for the Vikings. It’s as simple as that. All of the effort that O’Connell has put into building it wouldn’t mean anything if the team’s best player wasn’t serving as the foundation.

“It’s all about us sticking together and not really listening to the outside noise,” Jefferson said. “We’ve just got to lean on each other, focus up, execute our plays, and figure out what we need to do to have a different outcome.”

As he finished up his chat with reporters this week, Jefferson tried to push the narrative forward, saying this minor setback for the Vikings will eventually pave the way for a major comeback.

“There are going to be better times,” he said. “There’s going to be a time where people cut on that TV and they’re talking all about us and they jump on our bandwagon.”

There’s nothing about Jefferson that suggests he won’t be around to see it through, and for that, the Vikings should consider themselves lucky.

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The ghost of the nearly record-breaking snowfalls of 2022-2023 haunted St. Paul’s snow emergency this week, forcing the city’s Public Works to pair civilian ticket issuers with police parking enforcement officers to issue printed instead of handwritten tickets to vehicles parked in plow areas.

In a purely administrative decision, “Ramsey County District Court ruled … that as of May 1, 2025, we couldn’t issue handwritten tickets,” explained St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw, in an interview Friday. “It was overwhelming the court system. In the winter of ’22 and ’23, we issued over 20,000 written tickets. Most of those were tickets for snow.”

The written tickets require additional data entry processing and generally take more time, he said.

With parking enforcement officers working the printers from their squad cars, civilians hired by Public Works served as runners this week, scouring streets to issue some 3,253 tickets from Sunday through Wednesday. Those tickets resulted in 952 tows, hitting the department’s goal of maintaining a clearance rate of about 30%.

“We were really efficient,” Kershaw said. “It’s at least as much as, or more than, some of our other snow emergencies.”

The snow emergency that was declared last Sunday officially ended at 9 p.m. Thursday, but snowing continued Friday morning, and could resume Saturday evening with another inch or so of precipitation. There also may be more snow next week.

“This week has been a good example of why we need a new model,” said Kershaw, who began experimenting last winter with alternating even/odd-side parking in two pilot areas in Highland Park and Payne-Phalen. “When we have successive little snows, it’s hard to go back and plow residential streets because they’re all parked up. You’ve got cars on both sides.”

“With this alternate side parking, we can go back and clean them up without calling a snow emergency,” he said.

Snelling-University, Selby-Western even/odd parking

To test the concept in more densely-populated areas, Public Works will enforce temporary even/odd parking in two new pilot areas as of Jan. 1, and they’re both “areas that are a little more difficult,” Kershaw said.

Near the intersection of Snelling and University avenues, even/odd parking will take effect west of Snelling and north and south of University, within the area bounded by Thomas Avenue, Snelling Avenue, St. Anthony Avenue/Interstate 94 and Aldine Street. In the southwest quadrant of the intersection of Selby and Western avenues, even/odd parking will take effect in the area bounded by Selby, Western, Summit Avenue and Dale Street.

On-street parking in the designated areas will be limited to one side of the street, alternating weekly between the even and odd-numbered addresses. Signage will be posted, and maps of the two areas are online at StPaul.gov/NewSnow.

Salting streets

St. Paul Public Works typically reserves salt or brine for major arterial streets, bridges and other high-traffic areas, rather than residential side streets, but sunny days followed by frigid overnight temperatures inspired a change of plan. In light of ice build-up and compacted snows during the freeze-thaw cycle, the department began salting residential streets, as well, and was still cleaning up where it could on Friday on both residentials and arterial thoroughfares.

Where to call if your street wasn’t plowed

Kershaw said he was confident plows had worked their way through every street in the city, but if your street isn’t fully plowed, call 651-266-9700 to have plows do another pass. Major ticketing and towing wrapped up Monday night, but the department has gone back to tag abandoned vehicles.

Delayed text alerts

On Sunday, before ticketing and towing commenced, some of the city’s alert systems kicked in a few hours later than usual.

St. Paul Public Works informs residents that a snow emergency is in effect through a variety of platforms, from social media blasts on sites such as X, previously known as Twitter, to emails and text alerts in multiple languages, an online parking map, a recorded line, local news media and, new in recent months, outgoing voice messages. Not all of those systems rolled out without a kink on Sunday.

A problem with a third-party vendor slowed text alerts for hours, sending out 66,000 text messages on a staggered basis.

“Some went out right away, some trickled out,” said Lisa Hiebert, a spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works, earlier this week.

The snow emergency was declared at about 12:30 p.m. and some 64,000 emails launched soon after, but by 2 p.m. only about half of the text alerts had been distributed. Still, “all the text messages went out by 6 p.m.,” Hiebert said, giving recipients several hours to move their cars.

Another issue — tied to the cyber-security incident that crippled city systems for weeks this summer — left Public Works scrambling to change the message on a recorded line — 651-266-PLOW — that residents can call for updated snow emergency information. That message was not changed until 6 p.m. Sunday, despite the best efforts of communications staff, Hiebert said.

“We had a little glitch with the voicemail message and being able to access that,” she said.

New and existing platforms

The city added a new phone service about a year ago that sends recorded snow emergency messages to 150,000 phone numbers culled from public records. The Everbridge Resident Connect service sends the voice recordings to landlines and mobile numbers using “open sources” registered in St. Paul, Hiebert said. Everbridge is distinct from the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) used by FEMA.

“It’s just one of many, many ways people can get the status update,” Hiebert said. “Signing up for email and text alerts is the best, but residents can also check out the snow emergency parking map, check our socials.” More information is online at StPaul.gov/snow.

How to report vehicles blocking plows

During a snow emergency, residents concerned about an abandoned vehicle blocking snowplow access can call Ramsey County’s non-emergency dispatch number — 651-291-1111 — or fill out an online form at StPaul.gov/SnowTicketing.

Minneapolis also declared a snow emergency on Sunday, after a winter storm that began the previous Friday finished dropping about 5 inches of snow throughout the Twin Cities.

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Hiebert’s advice to new residents?

“If you’re going out of town and you park on the street, make sure you always leave your keys with someone trusted, because we do ticket and tow,” she said.