Consumption is the point and purpose of all production

What matters in an economy is that consumers gain more of what consumers want. How those desires are met is, at very best, a minor and secondary question. So this is not something to worry about:

Shop closures soared at a record rate in the first half of the year as coronavirus lockdowns hit the high street.

Britain lost 6,001 more chain stores than it gained in the first half, up from a loss of 3,509 in the same period last year, a study by PWC, the professional services firm, found.

The pandemic has laid waste to high streets, costing thousands of jobs in the process.

Well, it could be something to worry about if shoppers still desired the services of those shops. However:

Although the retail sector rebounded after the spring lockdown

Retail sales are up year on year. That is, consumers are gaining what they want from the wider retail system, the services of the retail system. So, in the grander terms, we have no problem at all.

Sure, change is uncomfortable, transitions can be painful for those being transitioned and so on. So to the extent that we have a problem it is one of easing this passage from one method of sating consumer desires to another. That is, we don’t want to go about saving, supporting or subsidising the old way but we might well want to support people through the transition.

To be plain about it, if people don’t want physical shops any more then bye bye physical shops. For the only point of any form of production is to enable consumption and if we’ve a new and more desired method of gaining that consumption then the old production system can go hang.