Everything’s abstract until it happens to us.
Dominoes falling are abstractions till one falls on you. Lines of dominoes toppling are an apt analogy to extremely central systems that are securely bound, that is, all the transactions that stream through the centralized centers are interconnected, so when one domino falls, it falls chains of dominoes that then topple other chains.
2 ideas assist illuminate this systemic vulnerability to cascading interruptions: reliance chains and path reliance. Dependency chains are set up when each critical part is dependent on a long line of other parts working perfectly. One example is our dependence on our car. If one component in our vehicle fails and it breaks down, our life loses performance: we can’t get to work, drop the kids off, pick up medications at the drug store, and so on.
Path dependence explains the way initial choices constrain all future results and decisions. For instance, moving to the countryside means we can’t walk to important services, we absolutely need a functioning automobile. The decision to move constrains our alternatives and limits what choices are within reach.
Some lines of dominoes fall outside our field of vision– till a domino arrive at us. A modern example is healthcare. Think about the ultimate effects of this: 43% of physicians regret their career choice: AMA.
In major metro areas, the dominoes falling in health care aren’t yet visible, but in rural counties health care is currently constrained by lacks of medical professionals and nurses. Care is implicitly being allocated by long wait times for consultations with professionals. Clients are shunted around for more tests but slots for real treatment are restricted.
Regions which have actually picked to close down plants generating 24/7 electricity in favor of intermittent “green” energy and battery backups (green is in quotes since there’s nothing green about the production of solar panels, wind turbines or batteries) have established dependency chains and path reliances that can lead to electrical power being allocated by means of rolling blackouts.
The longer the chain of things that have to work perfectly for us to get what we require, the higher our vulnerability to something down the line breaking down. Thanks to recency bias, we take it for granted that long worldwide supply chains and complex infrastructure will all continue to work perfectly. The entire chain is invisible to us. We only see and only appreciate the last step: the gas in the service station tanks, the goodies on the supermarket shelves, and so on.
We just care when we can’t get a doctor’s visit till 6 weeks from now, or we experience rolling blackouts.
We also don’t care about constrained alternatives and decisions until a couple of dominoes arrive on us and we recognize simply how reliant we are on things we have no control over. Everything’s abstract up until it happens to us.
When we understand that the choices we make now have the possible to make or break our future lives, we end up being more motivated to tease apart dependency chains and course dependencies and figure out what we can do to decrease our vulnerabilities by increasing our self-reliance.
The number of dominoes must fall before one falls on us? Highly likely fewer than we believe.
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