Making your whole economy a Land fill Economy dependent on the dream of infinite replacements and alternatives is the height of hubris and recklessness.
Really couple of people ask: what if it breaks? It’s a question we can ask of a terrific many things: touchscreens, motherboards, tools, automobiles, supply chains and whole systems: what if it breaks?
The very first thing we discover is the great number of things which can’t be repaired, they can only be replaced. All the best repairing the touchscreen or motherboard in your vehicle. Oops, the leak in your tire is in the sidewall, no repair work possible, purchase a new tire.
The entire economic system presumes two things: 1) there will constantly be replacements for whatever that can’t be fixed and 2) there will constantly be alternative to everything we want. Beef too expensive? Then buy fake-meat. If that’s too pricey, substitute chicken. And so on: there will constantly be a substitute that can scale worldwide that will get less expensive as it scales.
Unfortunately, both presumptions are false. There are no replacements for oil and fertilizers. What we have are ifs: if we build 1,000 nuclear reactors, then we can convert this electricity into hydrogen which will be the fuel of the future. And so on. If, if, if. Nice, but getting beyond if is non-trivial: oops, we need hydrocarbon energy to build the 1,000 atomic power plants and all the intricate equipment to transform seawater into hydrogen on a scale big enough to matter.
Not just are there no replacement for many things, there are no replacement parts, either. Too bad about your whole Smart Home system decreasing. The vendor of the do-hickey that’s linked to your hub failed therefore there’s no replacement parts or software upgrades. Looks like you’ll need to replace the whole system. However since the software application ran out date anyhow, it was time to upgrade anyway.
The problem is we can’t replace whole systems when they break down. Sewage treatment, delivery of food, manufacture of medical materials and medications, delivery of feedstock for plastics making– the entire global economy is now a firmly bound system with few replacements for anything that matters and no alternatives for all the things that matter.
One of the few favorable movements of the previous few years is best to fix. The concept here is to outlaw corporation’s favorite technique to speed your old product’s pathway to the Garbage dump by sealing the gadget to make it difficult to open and voiding the service warranty must anybody effort to repair what was designed to be unrepairable.
The foundation of the Garbage dump Economy is to make stuff that can’t be repaired and is created to fail so you need to purchase a new one– and soon. However repair work is not ensured. If you happen to own a car which was produced in the millions, there will likely be third-party suppliers for parts. But time and cost both deteriorate the schedule of replacement parts. There is no assurance replacement parts will be offered. Yes, some can be extruded in 3D printers, however there are an excellent numerous things that can’t be fabbed on 3D printers: specialty wires, computer chips, alloys, etc.
Carrying on to bigger scale systems: where’s the replacement parts when democracy breaks? How about the systems that provide oil and fresh food over countless miles?
The reliability of these unrepairable systems has offered us an incorrect self-confidence in their permanence and durability. As more things end up being sole-source, as supply chains stretch and add extra points of failure, as the reliance chains increase in intricacy, all these systems– political, technological, logistics– become more delicate– the reverse of resilient.
The “buy a new one” faith in the limitless powers of substitution has stripped the economy of strength and the capability to fashion workarounds. Given that things can no longer be fixed, nobody understands how to repair anything. Given that everything is sealed, no one even knows what’s inside the system. Because we’re assured whatever can be substituted and changed, we no longer know how anything in fact works. The best and the brightest have actually never seen a green bean growing on the plant or considered how all the goodies that make their “cash” useful– as in, there are things readily available for your “money” to purchase– were made or grown, cleaned up, packaged, shipped and provided.
As I discuss in my book Worldwide Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Method for the United States, securely bound systems and centralized systems are essentially developed to fail. Load the system with reliance chains choked with points of failure for which there are no fixes or substitutes and after that extend those chains across the globe and you get a system enhanced for fragility and failure.
What if it breaks? What’s your Plan B, your workaround, your repair? What if you can’t buy a brand-new food delivery system off the shelf, or a brand-new democracy that all you have to do is unwrap and plug it in? Where are the low-cost, abundant replacements for everything that’s now chronically scarce due to the fact that there are no replacements!.
?. !? Making your whole economy a Land fill Economy dependent on the dream of infinite replacements and replacements is the height of hubris and recklessness, right up there with war is a solution that will fix whatever that’s broken.
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