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Musings Report 2018-40 10-6-18 What's Your Plan C?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
What's Your Plan C?
We all know what Plan A means: maintain the current course because everything in our lives is holding steady.
We also know what Plan B means: our plan for adjusting to significant changes in the fundamentals of our lives: health, family, employment, career, locale and finances. Many households assume life will remain steady-state and as a result they haven’t developed well-thought out plans to deal with common contingencies, i.e. Plan B.
So what’s Plan C? Plan C is the plan few households even consider: the one to deal with non-linear social, political and economic upheaval.
I tend to think of Plans A, B and C in physical terms. Plan A is when we're at our best, full of energy and enthusiasm. All sorts of things seem possible.
Plan B is when our energy is waning, and we're struggling a bit. Plan C is when we're exhausted and not sure we can continue. Everything that seemed easy in Plan A now looks impossible, and even getting back to Plan B is slipping away.
Plan C is all about conserving reserves, i.e. being careful to maintain some reserves of energy and money. It's like swimming in rough water or free-diving: you always want to leave some air in your lungs so you can expel an unexpected gulp of seawater.
Very few of us plan on getting completely drained, and so we forget how poorly we do when we're hungry, thirsty, exhausted, broke and under pressure: our thinking gets cloudy, and our focus narrows. It's not a good moment for trying to plan anything.
Martial arts teaches us that when push comes to shove, we act on instinct, and the point of martial arts is to instill through repeated rigorous practice better instinctive responses to threats. As Bruce Lee observed (in paraphrase): I fear the man who has practiced one kick 1,000 times, not the man who has practiced 1,000 different kicks.
The same can be said of Plan C: when we've been pushed beyond our limits, we're not going to be able to execute a complex plan. We're going to respond instinctively from very low levels of energy and critical thinking.
Here's an example: Plan A is gasoline will always be available on demand, and the only variable is the price. If the price rises significantly, then we'll reduce our household's number of trips by consolidating errands and perhaps start carpooling to work.
Plan B is invoked when one of the wage earners in the household loses their job. With income slashed, it's prudent to look at the high costs of owning multiple vehicles. (National estimates put ownership costs at around $16,000 annually per vehicle).
Plan C is a rerun of the 1973 gas crisis that triggered panic-hoarding, which quickly emptied gas station supplies. Lines of those waiting at gas stations soon snaked for blocks, and the entire system of distribution of gasoline frayed.
What everyone assumed was stable and permanent turned out to be contingent on geopolitical issues that arose very suddenly. What we assumed was stable and permanent melted into thin air.
Civil authorities soon instituted an odd-even license plate number system that cooled the panic, but the lines and shortages remained part of everyday life.
Plan C poses this question: what do we do if gasoline is no longer available in whatever quantities we desire? What will our response be? What range of options do we have? If the crisis persists, then what?
There is no perfect Plan C, for a number of reasons. As Mike Tyson memorably observed: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." In other words, our plan might not survive contact with real-world non-linear upheaval.
The other reasons is the difficulty in forecasting what sorts of non-linear upheavals we might have to deal with in a social-economic-political crisis that doesn't go away in a few days. Realistically, we can't plan for every contingency.
This leads us to the notion that the key characteristics of Plan C should be the traits of adaptability: preserving our flexibility, ruthlessly slashing complexity (our ability to maintain complexity degrades very quickly, especially if the payoff is diminishing rapidly) and maintaining reserves of cash, energy and essentials that give us some breathing room, i.e. a buffer that gives us a wider range of options and a bit of time to think through the most appropriate response.
Plan C flexibility and buffers enable us to collect feedback and adjust on the fly--the basic idea of the OODA Loop: observe, orient, decide, and act, "developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd. Boyd applied the concept to the combat operations process, often at the operational level during military campaigns."
The idea here is not to expect perfection in our assessment and decision-making--the goal is to expect to make mistakes because the situation is novel and fluid, but to change course quickly based on feedback, try the new course and then adjust it as circumstances dictate.
There's a few other characteristics of a flexible Plan C: minimal debt, minimal dependence on vulnerable systems and loosely bound networks. Debt and dependence both increase our vulnerability by reducing our buffers and adding burdens when we can least afford them.
Networks have nodes, and super-coherent systems' nodes are tightly bound, meaning a failure in one node quickly spreads to all nodes; tight bonds increase contagion.
Loosely bound nodes are networked, but they retain their independence. The failure of one node may affect some other nodes but it won't topple all the networked nodes like dominoes.
Independence is itself an asset and a buffer against non-linear disruption, just like cash and other tangible assets. Independence is a function of self-reliance, and of social capital based on trust and mutual benefit rather than on authority or dependence.
Plan C is all about retaining and nurturing our adaptability, flexibility and resilience, skills and assets that will aid our response to any systemic challenges that might arise.
Highlights of the Blog This Past Week
The Dynamics of Decadence 10/5/18
Pensions Now Depend on Bubbles Never Popping (But All Bubbles Pop) 10/3/18
The Labor Shortage Is Real 10/1/18
How Do We Change Our Lives in a System That's Broken? 9/30/18
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Let's make it two things: I discovered my niece's husband master welder Michael D. is fabricating the artful trophies for Kailua-Kona's famous Ironman World Championship triathlon competition held October 13 this year.
#2: My musical mentor S.T. indulged me in another recording session for a new instrumental, Peaceful Deviance, built on ethereal open guitar chords. (3 minutes)
Musings on the Economy: How Much Oil Is Left that We Can Extract at Affordable Prices?
You might reckon we have a pretty good idea of how much oil is left in the ground (i.e. proven reserves) that we can extract at prices that consumers can afford, but it turns out we don't have an informed estimate based on agreed-upon standards.
This 118 page report will disabuse you of the idea that the proven-reserves estimates floating around are anything more than guesses, many of which are based less on data than on promoting an agenda.
Extrapolation of oil past production to forecast future production in barrels (118 pages)
The author makes an estimate in the last few pages, and it isn't as cheery as official estimates, which tend to forecast 40+ years of plentiful oil. The affordable oil (i.e. under $100 / barrel) is depleting fast, and may not meet demand within a few years.
It's not necessary to slog through every line of the report, but it's worth scrolling through the voluminous charts.
From Left Field
50 Historical Photos (Vol. 59)(via LaserLefty) (10:11 min)-- mostly pop culture but some interesting historical nuggets...
What Is Threatening Science? -- overproduction of elites...
Plastic Pollution: The Age of Unsolvable Problems
Universal Basic Income or Universal Living Wage?
The Long Fall of Bob Woodward: From Nixon’s Nemesis to Cheney’s Savoir
What happened to crude oil production after the first peak in 2005?
This Ivy League food scientist was a media darling. He just submitted his resignation, the school says. (via Maoxian)
What "Socialism" Means To Americans Today -- few understand the classical definition...
I spoke to hundreds of American men who still can’t find work
What Is the Average American Net Worth?
Ten Years After the Crash, We’ve Learned Nothing -- well, some of us learned how to get away with fraud and embezzlement....
The three vortices of doom: energy, money, the state
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." Marcus Aurelius
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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