spiralofhope

Soulful writing >

was http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/quotes/Nindalf.txt

A cultural vulnerability (Score:3, Interesting)
by Nindalf on Saturday February 02, @02:27PM (#2942781)
(User #526257 Info | http://buskware.org/ ^[ 1 ] In June 22, 2003 the site said “Buskware.org was out of date to the point of being misleading, and I don’t have time to work on it now. It may be back at some time in the future.” )

In selecting customs, for a given level of sophistication, there is an unavoidable tradeoff between efficiency and robustness. In other words, choice must be made between aiming for the maximum profit in the probable case, or the maximum probability of sufficient profit. The longer a civilization enjoys prosperity, the more it will tend to slip towards a preference for efficiency. Considered in isolation or over the short term, each step along this path seems wise: after all, a failure this year is unlikely, and a failure in any one system can be compensated for with others.

Then, some unaccounted trend changes the rules, it turns out that the probabilities were incorrectly estimated, and the civilization collapses.

To become more efficient, all the businesses are sacrificing their reserves. For example, the switch from warehousing to Just In Time manufacturing and delivery. This saves money by letting them buy materials later, use less storage space, and forcing them to have a smoother, more predictable supply chain (when you have no reserve of parts, and the needed shipment of parts doesn’t arrive or is defective, someone gets fired; JIT makes it much harder to hide mistakes from upper management).

It also means that disruption of any element disrupts the entire system. Production halts. Distribution halts. Productivity drops to zero until everything gets back to normal.

Or look at computers, and the increasing emphasis on network resources. Why keep a dictionary by your desk when it’s quicker to look it up in dictionary.com? Why have software that can be run on an unconnected computer if you can reduce piracy and keep it up to date better by having it served fresh on the network? Why not just let all work grind to a halt when the network goes down if you’ve got 99% uptime?

I don’t even want to think about the delicate lace of high finance, much less talk about it. The fact that the typical private person is now deeply in debt rather than having savings is sufficiently illustrative of our modern philosophy of finance and the relative esteem in which we hold efficiency and robustness.

To make matters worse, we have these cultural contradictions: we have one set of rules for disasters, and rely on a contradictory set of rules for business as usual, including preparing for disasters.

During a disaster our capitalist system suddenly switches to, “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability.” ^[ 2 ] No it fucking well does not, comrade. There is plenty of compensation for loss, but no reward for preserving oneself and not being a drain on others. Those who hold reserves in disasters are greedy hoarders, those who sell them at the market value reflecting the shortage condition are filthy gougers.

In short, there is no profit incentive to hold a reserve for times of disaster, as it will be taken from you and you will be compensated at non-disaster rates at best. Even spending extra money to reduce your vulnerability means that you won’t get your cut of emergency measures compensation. Instead of letting preparation pay its fair dividends, we rely on government to force unaffected regions to bail out affected ones… which works until the affected region is too large for unaffected ones to compensate for.

In short, it is not our technology, but our culture which makes us vulnerable. The technology supports a full range between optimal efficiency and optimal robustness, and we choose to discourage safeguards by our pattern of investments, choice of products and vendors, and reaction to crisis.