Simply put, our economy and society have been enhanced for failure.
If we look at the fragility and instability of vital systems, it’s clear that 2022 will be the year of breakdown. Let’s begin by examining how systems break down, a process I’ve streamlined into the graphic listed below.
1. No matter whether it was prepared or not, all systems are optimized to process specific inputs to produce specific outputs. Each system is pared down to make the most of performance as the ways to optimize earnings. This efficiency in service of taking full advantage of revenues needs compromises that only end up being noticeable when some crucial part of the system stops working.
The system that ships containers worldwide offers a helpful example. Shipping containers reinvented shipping and minimized costs by commoditizing containers (all standard sizes), container ships (particularly created to carry thousands of containers and container ports with particularly developed cranes, docks and truck lanes/ queueing.
It’s possible to load a container on some other craft with a jury-rigged crane, however the effectiveness of that is basically a fraction of the optimized system: the jury-rigged crane will just have the ability to fill a handful of containers, the ship will only be able to carry a few containers, and the probability of the containers moving increases.
The infrastructure and labor are both highly specialized. Calling out the National Guard to accelerate container offloading is an useless gesture unless the Guard can provide more cranes and knowledgeable operators.
The higher the optimization, the greater the fragility as the breaking of any one link brings the whole system to a halt. Throwing in equipment and labor that the system isn’t developed to use will fail.
Virtually every important system has actually been stripped of redundancy, resilience, reserves and flexibility as the ways to totally optimize inputs, procedures and outputs. The system works well if every link in the dependency chain is working completely. Must one link go down, the entire system goes down.
2. Cost-cutting has removed systems of back-up staffing and proficiency. Full-time employees have actually been changed by gig workjers, agreement employees, part-time staff on call, and so on. Experienced personnel expense excessive so they’ve been let go too, so there is no depth in numbers or knowledge.
3. Management is top-heavy with MBAs and bean-counters with little pragmatic experience or understanding of the systems they’re managing. Management is optimized to advance those who can create big profits, not those with experiential skills required to satisfy crises in real-world dependency chains, production, breakdowns, etc. So when the system comes apart, supervisors simply don’t have the knowledge or abilities to solve real-world problems.
The abilities that are most desirable when whatever is running smoothly are worthless in crisis. Who do you want to go into combat with, the continually promoted officer who won high marks for filing reports on time or the officer with actual battle experience who got passed over for promo since he/she didn’t devote the appropriate attention to paperwork, meetings, virtue-signaling and derriere-kissing?
Sadly the huge bulk of our systems are handled by people who do not have the long experience and hands-on skills required to fulfill cascading crises.
4. Systems are now so intricate and opaque that they are in effect optimized to stop working in ways that are impervious to fast repairs. Administrative objective drift, virtue-signaling, the erosion of responsibility, multiplying platforms and software and the unlimited growth of compliance and regulatory problems have loaded every system with many points of failure and procedural friction that contributes little or nothing to the company’s core mission. As resources are devoted to make-work procedural black holes, the objective rots and collapses at the first crisis.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: calling important services (tax payments, etc) hardly ever creates a prompt reply, much less a solution; a brand-new bridge or subway line takes years to construct and is billions over budget; software application tasks meant to simplify complex regulative procedures (building authorizations, and so on) never work right and wind up slowing the whole system down, scams is widespread, software security is laughably bad … the list is practically unlimited.
5. When the system has been removed of resources, skilled staff, back-up devices and materials and filled with ineffective friction, even a little crisis will bring down the whole system. In the graphic listed below, all of these resources are the buffer that makes it possible for systems to react to the pressing needs of crises. Once these are gone, the only possible outcome is systemic collapse.
6. We’ve jointly lost the capability and willingness to deal with crises for which there is no happy-story ending. We just want to hear the positive story, the twinkles of hope, the miracle treatments, the pain-free tech repair, and so on, and if we get a dosage of reality instead, we’re quick to dismiss the bearer of troublesome news as an alarmist, a doom-and-gloomer, etc.
To put it simply, our economy and society have been enhanced for failure. Drifting along in a daze of disconnected-from-reality complacency we are entirely unprepared to handle truths that don’t respond to wonderful thinking, optimism, hope and tech dreams.
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