Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis
At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost half of the East Coast’s gasoline shut down due to a ransomware attack. Almost half a million intermodal containers sat on cargo ships unable to dock at Los Angeles ports. A train carrying thousands of tons of hazardous and flammable chemicals derailed near East Palestine, Ohio. Air Traffic Control cleared a FedEx plane to land on a runway occupied by a Southwest plane preparing to take off. Eye drops contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria killed four and blinded fourteen.
While disasters like these are often front-page news, the broader connection between the disasters barely elicits any mention. America must be understood as a system of interwoven systems; the healthcare system sends a bill to a patient using the postal system, and that patient uses the mobile phone system to pay the bill with a credit card issued by the banking system. All these systems must be assumed to work for anyone to make even simple decisions. But the failure of one system has cascading consequences for all of the adjacent systems. As a consequence of escalating rates of failure, America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.
Grab a coffee.
Competence Crisis…yup…I see it.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/canadian-political-leader-jagmeet-singh-brands-canada-genocidal/
But genocide is REAL(in his mind).
Doomsday Preppers.
Paranoid or Prescient?
Well, it starts with “Always be prepared” as it was taught in the Boy Scouts. It is an important lesson to remember. Being caught unprepared can be at the least, embarrassing, or at worst, deadly,
The “Boy Scouts” before they became “Scouts”; before DEI; before LGBTQ+, etc. may have taught you some survival skills.
I shudder to think what they teach today.
Yup, brave new world. Methods and systems that have been tried and trusted from Aristotle to the astronauts were cast aside and replaced by institutional foolishness.
In summation, by removing the straight white Anglo male from the equation, things go downhill.
In the canadian context, insert the “superior” Franco into federal government roles and incompetence rapidly rises to the top.
Yeh, but the food in the cafeteria is way better! 🙂
you would think that with rhodesia and south africa as examples, one would be very care full of putting in unqualified people in charge of technically complex systems.
Just thinking the same thing. When will seffrica change its name to wakanda or dindu-nuffin?
If there was actual accountability in each position of responsibility, all lot of things would iron themselves out in time. Everyone who is protected by a union or is in a position to blame someone else and still pick up their cheque on Friday, has very little incentive to care for the needs of the ones they are supposed to serve.
I recall reading Asimov’s “Foundation” Trilogy many years ago. The chapter on “Tech Men” … those who tended the complexities of the futuristic times .. the technology was so good that it needed little maintenance, but eventually as it aged it required maintenance that those in charge no longer had skills to perform.
Too many years of not having to do anything much brought the less capable, more ignorant, to those cushy gigs. The result was that the Galactic Empire was falling apart … much like we are today,
Isaac saw it coming and told us about it in his great sci-fi novels.
An by the by … robots may well become our rulers. However, they may not be as magnanimous as Daneel Olivaw.
“America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.”
Ya …. slowly at first then suddenly, at some future point. Then it’s too late fix it.
The Peter Principle is alive and well, especially in the educational and religious systems.
Why bring religion into it? All religious systems in Canada are voluntary. The issues are in major sectors of the economy that have been ‘nationalized’ and are without the corrective power of the free market; education, health care, regulatory compliance and so forth.
Bringing religion into the discussion is important as religion still plays a major role in family life for many people. In order to dismantle the families – which is widely seen as being a goal of the hard left – you have to attack all institutions that can possibly support the family. So the left works to infect religion as well, degrading its message and its cohesive effect on family and community.
It’s not as dramatic a systems failure as having airplanes falling out of the sky, but it is still a degradation of an historically important system.
Fair enough
“All religious systems in Canada are voluntary.”
Except participation in the one with Lord Trudeau as saviour. THAT one is mandatory.
A society can usually remedy or survive the existence of private discrimination when irrational but when the state engages in “irrational” discrimination we see the results of group and positive rights which only exist at the expense of natural rights of others. Group and positive rights are essentially a form of social cannabalism. What we now enjoy is a thoroughly captured institutional and systemic form of societal vandalism through mandating the chemical determinism of racism, sexism, etc over the objective pursuit of excellence.
Reason 461 that the state should not be engaged in 97% of what it is engaged in.
That nagging feeling you get knowing things are only going to get worse.
Every village in Canada with a tiny fraction of the budget of Indian reserves can produce safe potable water while reserves cannot. Any guesses why that would be? Could it be that poorly educated people think that scabies is caused by chlorine and shut the chlorination system off thereby causing illness or death?
This is one of the primary reasons I no longer fly; and it’s not just that the people in charge can no longer be trusted with the airplanes. They can no longer even be trusted to operate the airport, in any effective fashion.
Roaddog
As was the case clearly demonstrated last Tuesday in Calgary’s YYC airport … total loss of power for more than just a few hours.
Nothing moved.. Gates shut down, Security Closed, Baggage conveyors dead… with the inevitable of massively delayed flights and cancellations.
Cyber attack..?
No explanation given
But, but, but … Kate!! The SAT is racist! Even math is racist! Native people’s around the world use sticks and witch doctors to count numbers … you can’t expect a 15th generation American black kid to do the white man’s educational dictates. Ya gotta grade and advance on f-e-e-l-I-n-g-s … grade and advance students based on their social scores.
Yeah … society will keep paying a price for this idiocy … until we’ve burned it all down ma’aaan … completely destroyed the society our grandfathers built.
I swear Karl Denninger wrote this precise essay a few months ago.
Someday the 70 year old guys won’t be around anymore to build your missiles either.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/raytheon-calls-retirees-help-produce-stinger-missiles
Eljay,
Rudyard Kiplinger wrote this same essay centuries ago, except as a poem.
The Sons of Martha
https://www.poetry.com/poem/33576/the-sons-of-martha
The Eloi and the Morlocks. How dignified and refined it is to be an Eloi, but the Morlocks will rule the Earth.
The previous bump in the road was in the mid ’80’s when the economy was tanking and the WWII generation was reaching retirement age. My field was construction back then and I remember it well because I was starting a small contracting business. The lack of competence in new supervision was palatable.
Race politics?.. its not that white men were smart it was how they regulated themselves.. They just so happened to be white.. You cant put a tool in somebodies hand based on race or party affiliation and expect the supporting mechanisms to hold that up.. What happens when the supporting mechanisms fall to the same thing..
Everybody cant be the owners dumb son?.. Doing a whirlwind tour through the company..
Merit.
Is a five letter swear word in Human Resources Departments..
For it “violates” all the special victimhood criteria to ask,”Can you do the job?”
Especially when those doing the interview have no idea what the job really entails..
After “interviewing” with any large company,have you ever asked yourself; “What the F?”
Who would want to work for ,let alone with such morons?
Strange thing about competency,when you are competent work seeks you.
When you are useless,you are always “seeking work”.
The perverse incentives have created a glorious gongshow.
The trades are saturated with jobs that deliberately kneecap your ability to get work done.
Forcing interaction with certified management morons.
And the pay off diminishes with every hour worked.
Self employment allows far more freedom.
And a whole lot more self respect.
With a suitable reduction in theft by government.
With the helping hand of Revenue Canada and Workers Compensation extortion,human resource management makes it almost impossible for a company to hire competent people..
And it shows.