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How Systems Collapse: Reaping What We've Sown October 27, 2020
Don't expect healthcare or any other hollowed-out, heavily optimized system to function
as it once did.
A great many Americans will be shocked when our healthcare systems start failing because they believed the PR that "we have the finest healthcare system in the world." The ability to deliver the finest care to a few does not translate into an ability to deliver the finest care to the many, nor does it mean the system is robust enough to withstand a tsunami. As I have endeavored to explain in recent posts, systems optimized for narrow envelopes fail when they slip outside that envelope. One analogy is an airliner that is optimized in terms of fuel efficiency to fly above 30,000 feet at around 540 miles per hour. The optimized envelope allows for somewhat higher and lower flight paths, but if the airliner is forced to fly at 500 feet, it will no longer have the range it had at 30,000 feet. America's healthcare system is optimized for treating a relative handful of severely ill patients. As costs (and profit margins) have soared, the system has been stripped of hospital beds, extra supplies, etc. because these hurt the all-important bottom line: why maintain redundancies and buffers when all that matters in America is "maximizing shareholder value"? In the pathological pursuit of "maximizing shareholder value," Corporate America's healthcare complex tossed community service and employees overboard. Sure, there is endless glossy (i.e. expensive) PR glorifying the corporate simulacrum of "community service," but everyone knows it's just PR: if a hospital fails to produce the profits demanded by corporate HQ, it's closed, regardless of the negative impacts on the community. Sorry, folks, it's just business. When the "store" is no longer sufficiently profitable, it's closed, just like Walmart closes underperforming stores. The same sanitized, bloodless pursuit of maximizing profits (kneel before the mighty god we worship, Shareholder Value!) has stripped away the pretense that healthcare corporations care about their employees. Yes, the glossy PR about how much Corporate America cares about its communities and employees is endless, but it's all artifice: employees are treated just like factory workers in developing-world sweatshops. Everyone is expendable, replaceable, just another cog in the machine, and woe to any employee in Corporate America's healthcare complex who runs afoul of the endless compliance and regulatory reporting. We're about to reap what we've sown in worshipping "shareholder value" and stripmining communities and employees. The people in the sweatshop get it: we don't count, we're just here to make some rich people even richer. The healthcare sweatshop workers will repay the absence of employer loyalty in kind: you had no loyalty to us, we have no loyalty to you. When the tsunami wave hits, do you sacrifice yourself to save someone else, or do you conclude the better strategy is save yourself first? As I noted in This Is How It Ends: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (September 10, 2020): The most competent will realise the impossibility of keeping it glued together and so they will exit first. The most noble will try to keep it going but they will burn out and drop away, leaving the incompetent to oversee the final collapse. System after system has been optimized to only function in a narrow envelope. Once it slips outside that envelope, it unravels very quickly and then collapses. Those outside the system are bamboozled by the hype and PR and recency bias ("but it worked fine last year"), insiders know better. Many will try to keep it all glued together for the sake of the patients, but the tsunami will be so relentless that saving themselves will eventually take priority. After all, the "shareholder value / compliance is all that matters" system never cared about you; why should you sacrifice yourself so the executives can keep their multi-million dollar bonuses? All you cared about were profits--well go right ahead and keep all the profits. We're gone. Don't expect healthcare or any other hollowed-out, heavily optimized system to function as it once did. The fuel tanks are almost empty and we're still 1,000 miles from land. COVID-19–Associated Hospitalizations Among Health Care Personnel (CDC) 
My new book is available! A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts (Kindle $7, print $17) Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF). The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction. Recent Podcasts: AxisofEasy Salon #27: Will the Network State be capable of acting in the public good? (1 hr) My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts My recent books: A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF). Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF). Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF). The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF) Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF). If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. 
Thousands apply for grueling jobs in Amazon warehouses, low-paid serfdom
with only one purpose: increasing the profits of billionaires. Wouldn't it be beneficial if those
people had an alternative source of paid work that served the interests of their family and community?
Many people dismiss my proposed alternative (CLIME) as too idealistic to work in the real world. Nobody says corporations are too idealistic to work in the real world, yet CLIME is a system of community owned and run corporations. The only difference between the two is the purpose and ownership. CLIME: Community Owned Corporations The world has entered an era of profound uncertainty. The Old Normal is gone for good, and the deck is shifting ominously beneath our feet. Now is the moment to ask: what would a fairer, more sustainable system look like? How would it be better for me, humanity and the planet? Even before the global upheavals, our system was failing. Now that it's unraveling, it's time for a new arrangement that's actually sustainable on our resource-depleted planet that doesn't favor wealthy insiders. But those gorging on inequality will never accept reforms that strip away their unearned privileges, and so the only practical way forward is a Hacker's Teleology. What's a Hacker's Teleology? A hack is a workaround in a kludgy, broken system-- a new way of connecting the dots. Teleology means the destination we end up reaching because that's where the dots lead. In this book I connect the dots of my own life experiences to show how a sustainably fair way of organizing human activity would work. In telling my story, I'm also telling our story, because we all share our limited-resources world and the same aspirations for fairness, belonging, getting ahead and a say in our future. So let's get started on an arrangement that actually works for all of us--and our world. Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF). The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction. A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet 20% and 15% discounts end September 30 (Kindle $7, print $17)
Recent entries: How Systems Collapse: Reaping What We've Sown October 27, 2020 Next Up: Global Depression October 26, 2020 Everything We Assume Is Permanent Is Actually Fragile October 23, 2020 Everything is Staged October 22, 2020 The New Tyranny Few Even Recognize October 21, 2020 Will the Stock Market Be Dragged to the Guillotine? October 19, 2020 The "Titanic" Analogy You Haven't Heard: Passively Accepting Oblivion October 16, 2020 Why We're Doomed: Our Delusional Faith in Incremental Change October 14, 2020 Our Simulacrum Economy October 13, 2020 How We Institutionalized Incompetence October 12, 2020 Has Our Luck Finally Run Out? October 9, 2020 A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall October 8, 2020 What Could Go Wrong? Plenty October 6, 2020 Corruption Is Now Our Way of Life October 5, 2020 Things Change October 2, 2020
The Empire of Uncertainty
October 1, 2020
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