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Musings Report 2024-50 12-14-24 The Precipice Few See
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The Precipice Few See
Readers ask what I propose as solutions to the problems I explore. This is a natural question, especially in America, where the zeitgeist holds that there are solutions to every problem, and all we need to do is be positive, innovate, work hard and solutions will manifest.
In the spirit of productive dialog, I've often discussed solutions in the 20 years I've been writing Of Two Minds. Proposing solutions is easy, actually fixing problems is the hard part, and though it is taboo in America's culture of solutions abound, I see all the proposed systemic solutions as doomed for reasons inherent to human nature and the structure of the system we inhabit.
In other words, the only solutions that might move the needle are private or localized. Sweeping solutions are pipe dreams, but the mythology of our era demands that comprehensive systemic solutions are always within reach, if only we do the work and grasp the brass ring.
Solutions in America tend to come in three flavors: technological, MBA-managerial and policy.
The technological flavor is the most highly prized and sought after because it's painless and profitable: add some sensors, conjure some code, and voila, the problem disappears. Everyone loves an engineering/tech fix.
The MBA solution is also highly valued and sought after because it's basically social-financial engineering: review some case studies, streamline some corporate operations, leverage a buyout, retrain employees, and voila, gushers of profits, productivity increases, those at the top of the heap are delighted, and those who lost out are easily ignored collateral damage.
Policy is understood to be messy due to the necessity for compromise and tedious legalese, but policy is Solutions Nirvana for two reasons: 1) the government can force change via regulations. penalties, fines, lawsuits, etc., so those who disagreed have to comply anyway and 2) big sweeping policy changes offer the grandest possible stage for public relations coups: we did it, we solved the problem with our signatures.
Alas, human nature has been selected to favor expedient, short-term responses designed to limit pain and sacrifice in the present moment, responses that consume the least amount of energy / effort possible.
In a system that defines problems, solutions and pain in financial metrics--money, which is a measure of time, effort, energy, cost and gain--then a solution that yields a financial gain is favored over any fix that demands financial costs and sacrifices.
When we have a medical emergency, we know something is no longer working correctly. Maybe we ignored the warning signs and indulged--without being fully aware of the risks--in wishful thinking, that the problem would fix itself in some magical way, or go away on its own. The emergency forces us to a reckoning with reality: we're seriously injured, ill, etc.
The solution is often arduous and costly, demanding sacrifices and pain, and in all cases, would have been more easily addressed had we taken the warning signs more seriously rather than dismiss them as "it's always been like this" or "things that will go away on their own."
This is an analogy for the present era.
Our system is no longer working, and the "solution" that's viewed as the one that generates the least pain for those in charge is play-acting: let's pretend there is no problem (by gaming statistics and claiming new technologies will fix everything). If necessary, then let's play-act the passage of "reforms" that we tout as systemic solutions rather than expedient fixes that ultimately make the problem worse.
There are many words to describe this substitution of play-acting for authentic solutions: artifice, propaganda, simulacra, facsimile, and so on.
This substitution is a satisfactory fix because we all understand "let's pretend" from childhood play-acting, and the play-acting enables us to avoid the pain of recognizing the difficulty or even impossibility of addressing the problem without long-term pain and sacrifice. So everyone with any authority loves "let's pretend."
Let's pretend "insurance" is actually insurance rather than a simulacrum of coverage that's actually a convoluted profit center, or phantom insurance with sky-high deductibles. Let's pretend there's a technological solution to every problem. Let's pretend "the market" solves all problems seamlessly, for example, healthcare:
The Gilded Age of Medicine Is Here: Health insurers and hospitals increasingly treat patients less as humans in need of care than consumers who generate profit.
"2024 was arguably the year that the mortal dangers of corporate medicine finally became undeniable and inescapable. In recent years, health-care corporations have embraced an approach that can only be described as gamification."
Could this extraordinary increase in hospital costs and healthcare be somehow related to private equity's takeover of the healthcare "industry"? Hmm... nope, let's pretend this is just "the market" finding the optimum solution, at least for those who own the "assets," which include not just hospitals, land, insurers and medical practices but our illnesses.
Let's pretend that "the smartest people in the room" can solve any problem because, well, they're "the best and the brightest." Let's pretend that policy tweaks--a new batch of regulations or eliminating a batch of regulations--will solve the underlying structural dynamics of unsustainable trends.
People sense this artifice but they fear any reform radical enough to actually change the underlying dynamics. This was the point Machiavelli made which I recently highlighted: everyone's an ally of reform until they fear their slice of the pie might be reduced. Their support is a mile wide and an inch deep, and evaporates once any pain appears to be even a remote possibility.
When pain arises in the present from structural causes, we demand immediate relief, never mind the long-term costs and consequences, just stop the pain now. So when the Global Financial Crisis threatened to unravel the entire financial system--in President Bush's succinct summary, this sucker's going down--the solution was to bail out the parasitic perpetrators of the crisis, the too big to fail banks of Wall Street, and socialize the fraud-ridden mortgage market, so the federal government would backstop the nation's mortgage and housing markets.
This federal backstop limited risk, which means "the market" was no longer an actual market, it had changed into a state managed profit machine for those controlling these industries.
This desire to maintain the status quo at any cost only changes when the system is unraveling in ways that the usual short-term expediencies can no longer stop, and desperation replaces greed as the primary motivator: make the pain stop, even if it means finally accepting the risk that these changes might cause me pain.
But by then the conventional reforms that were viewed as dangerously risky / radical are too tepid to make a difference.
In the grip of this angst--we sense things are no longer working but we're unwilling to consider any changes outside a very narrow band of feel-good policy tweaks--then the tendency is to go into what I call "attack mode"-- everyone's easily triggered and rages at whomever is available, which today is anyone online.
As for solutions, given the above, there aren't any, until it's too late. You see the problem here: the radical solutions are unacceptable until it's too late for them to work, as events have outraced our responses.
The snowballing effect of self-reinforcing feedbacks has gotten inside our OODA loop (to use correspondent Tom D.'s phrase), so we're responding to conditions that are no longer relevant. Once events get inside our OODA loop, we're responding not to fast-moving reality but to conditions that no longer exist, and so our responses cannot possibly stop the chaotic unraveling.
OODA loop: observation, orientation, decision, and action. If the observation is outdated / incorrect, the orientation will be incorrect and the decision and action will be fatally flawed. Whatever resources were committed by the decision will be squandered, greatly reducing the chances for any future action will be effective.
There may be a narrow window in which the system can be reset / rebalanced before it freefalls into chaotic dissolution, but only if the system has sufficient reserves / buffers / redundancies / adaptability to organize a coherent response in real time by coordinating all available resources. If the system has been bled dry and/or become too sclerotic / inflexible to respond quickly and with all available resources, the unraveling is unstoppable.
Buffers and redundancies have been stripped from systems globally in the name of increasing efficiency in service of boosting profits. The costs of maintaining reserves, buffers and redundancies are visible in the cost accounting as impediments to profits, while the long-term value of maintaining reserves is invisible until crisis makes their value visible.
But since they were stripped out to boost short-term profits, there's not enough resources--and expertise in dealing with fast-moving situations--to effectively reverse the unraveling.
So the system unravels, to the disbelief of everyone who reckoned the stability of the recent past was an accurate guide to the future.
Every culture will naturally be tempted to embrace whatever "solutions that worked in the past," and when these fail, then the next most acceptable "solutions" are those that fit the culture's mythologies.
In America, the dominant mythology (as I explain in my new book) is technology-driven Progress. It's only when technological-managerial-policy fixes fail that the window to a realistic reckoning and triage will open, if it opens at all.
The difficulty we have trading pain and sacrifice in the present for unpredictable, unknown gains in the distant future is scale-invariant, meaning that this quandary is present in our individual lives, in families, enterprises, cities and nations.
I often pose solutions here, but they're unacceptable because they require replacing the current system, which is defended tooth and nail by those profiting from it, even as it careens straight for the precipice.
I advocate self-reliance not as a perfect or complete solution--there are none--but as the one solution that is within our own control and the only one that reduces risk and increases the range of possible responses.
Self reliance boils down to taking responsibility for our responses rather than counting on some complex organization to take responsibility for our well-being. If I assume healthcare will become scarce, will I make different life choices? It's a question that's worth asking.
This also doesn't go over well with the general public, which wants "solutions" that provide everything they want on a systemic level: the meds I need should be plentiful and low-cost, food and fuel should be plentiful and low-cost, and so on. The "market" or the "government" should solve any problems that arise with some sort of new technology, managerial magic or policy tweak. Questioning our dependency on complex organizations to make everything right gets you in trouble.
So acceptable solutions are duly offered up and panned, with little effect, and unacceptable solutions evoke howls of outrage. Since we're exquisitely tuned to avoid pain, sacrifice and short-term loss, we're attracted to whatever "solution" demands the least pain, effort, risk and change.
In this mindset, play-acting "solutions" offer a highly attractive illusion of addressing the problem. After all, technology can fix everything, and problems tend to go away on their own without us having to change anything.
Here's an analogy. We take a daily morning walk and have done so for years. Over time, we've observed virtually every one of our neighbors who also walks, bicycles, jogs, etc. regularly. The most reliable walkers are the elderly, including those pushing 90 or over 90 years of age. The majority of those who start walking give up after a few days, weeks or months.
Walking yields health results that would be considered miraculous if they came in pill form, but daily walks require everything we don't fancy: discipline, effort, sacrifice of ease, occasional discomfort and so on.
In summary, I don't have any solutions other than self-reliance, a partial measure at best, with the goal being to increase our resources, experiential skillsets and flexibility, all of which increase the odds of a successful response to whatever conditions arise. These may well include unsustainable trends continuing to accelerate toward the precipice, beyond which the solutions of yesteryear and technocratic tweaks are incapable of fixing what's broken.
This is the precipice few see, so they are unprepared for the end-game of "let's pretend" play-acting substitutes for real solutions.
Highlights of the Blog
The Big Shining Lie: We're Better Off Now--No, We're Poorer, Much Poorer 12/11/24
Grey Swans Are Circling 12/9/24
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Found a giant volunteer pumpkin (kabocha) perched in a tree fern in our little private jungle. It weighed in at 13.5 pounds.
What's on the Book Shelf
Nature’s Ghosts by Sophie Yeo
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health (via Cheryl A.)
Astonishment as missing Canadian hiker emerges after weeks in wilderness
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear? --invasives destroy the ecosystem, too...
The message to Democrats is clear: you must dump neoliberal economics (Joseph Stiglitz)
José ‘Pepe’ Mujica: ‘I dedicated myself to changing the world and I didn’t change a damn thing’ (via Stuart L.)
Rethinking Energy, Productivity, and the Illusion of Endless Growth
Chinese cities fight lying flat mentality with ‘snail awards’ for poor workers (via Cheryl A.)
Smart People Are Especially Prone to Tribalism, Dogmatism and Virtue Signaling (via Richard M.)
Phone Provider Deploys "State-of-the-Art AI Granny" to Waste Scammers' Time (via Cheryl A.) -- brilliant...
Apple patents system for identifying people when facial scans aren’t enough
Americans Risk Losing Life Savings When Retirement Homes Go Bust
Seoul's $322 million gambit to save the city from crushing loneliness won't fix the source of its problems -- cluelessness on display....
Guns N' Roses - November Rain (9:16 min)-- interesting solo by Slash...
"The only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity." Joseph E. Stiglitz
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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