The Fragility of Complex Societies
Homo Americanus
In a wider sense, America’s strength has always been found in the self-reliant, highly individualist, even eccentric citizen. We see these profiles still in the independent trucker or the small business person. And I think they were an (unremarked upon) essential ingredient to the Tea Party movement, which is why it terrified the metrosexual media, the government apparatchik, and those dependent on federal largess. We need these cranky independent people, if only as a minority to remind the rest of us who are plugged into huge conglomerations, both private and public, for our wages and sustenance that there are dangers with reliance on hierarchy, centralized government, and high density — which, well beyond fragility, inevitably results in groupthink, fad, and cultural uniformity.
So it is not mindless to resist high speed rail (here in California it would be far wiser and cheaper first to ensure a three-lane, safe north-south freeway 99 or I-5). Our larger corporate farms, given the lack of ground water on the West Side, are dependent on centralized federal water projects, which, when abruptly cut off, can end production altogether — quite a contrast to the eastern side of California where smaller farmers, a shallower water table, and ancestral, local, and gravity-fed, Sierra-sourced water districts, funded by farmers themselves, are more resilient.
Complexity Everywhere — Fragility Too
This fragility of complexity has especially bothered me the last 80 days, well before the tragedy in Japan. Some random experiences: I am teaching one morning a week at Pepperdine for the spring 15-week semester, each week alternating between flying and driving. One week in January, the power at terminal one in LAX just went out — no explanation, no rhyme or reason, no notice when or if it would return. Thousands of travelers were rendered helpless — no running water, bathrooms, overhead lights. All flights delayed or cancelled, as mobs packed flight counters or simply walked out of the darkened halls to the curb. Then abruptly later it went back on — again, no explanation. The attendants at the counter simply shrugged and said “they” must have fixed it. To paraphrase those in the Wild Bunch, who are “they”?
“Free” ways allow freedom not allowed by mass transit. But in our day and age we neglected them, thought them even passé, and now they are beginning to resemble mass transit in their congested fragility. Last week I carefully got off the 405 onto the single 101 freeway exit lane to the west to Ventura (the route has not changed much in 40 years). The traffic was almost stopped, with no margin of error. And then, of course, one pickup truck, with poorly tied down crates and used lumber, scattered his load over the freeway, disrupting the entire flow — and causing complete stasis. Imagine, a single lane from the multilane 405 leads into the 101 west; block it, and thousands are stranded.
The California freeways were brilliantly designed. On good days I can drive 200 miles without incident in three hours; but again there is now, with 37 million people in these dense corridors, no margin of error — given that the freeways were never designed either for the present traffic flows or the sorts of drivers that now use them — mutatis mutandis, so too the airports. Driving in L.A. this semester, I get the sense that there are literally thousands of drivers who, each and individually, have the potential, through their own ignorance of traffic laws, lack of skill, or carelessness about their loads, simply to shut down such a complex system for tens of thousands for hours. I wonder how many drivers that soar by even have licenses, insurance, or registration.
Then on Thursday my old email server from CSU simply went out — a recorded message says they are working on it. But it has now been six days without the reception of a single email, and I get phone calls inquiring whether I retired. (The help desk advised getting a new account from somewhere else. I did, but am curious about such advice that translates into: don’t rely on us for service; try someone else). Again, in a nanosecond one’s entire electronic network is demolished and no one seems to know how to repair it with dispatch — or care too much that hundreds were without service.
I could go on, but all this suggests another danger of complexity — the inability to transmit knowledge and the dire wages of specialization. The original architects of such systems are now mostly dead, and we, their replacements, often lack their education and respect for civilization’s protocols. The result is that millions of Americans are simply enjoying a system built for them by others which they are not quite able to use, repair, expand — or understand.
I am not worried that contemporary elite engineers could not build a high-speed rail network, but I worry that the operators and the mechanics would not be able to ensure that it would run safely and on time. Again, when I drive in Los Angeles, I am amazed at the ingenuity of a long gone generation that crafted such a complex and ingenious system, and appalled at the ignoramuses text messaging and weaving who seem to abuse it by their incompetence or indifference to basic traffic safety and protocol. It is almost as if the drivers were not worthy of their inheritance.
Today’s popular culture knows Facebook well, but does one in a thousand know that a bee is necessary for an almond to set, or what a piston and cylinder are, or the difference between a southern and northern storm? I once asked my students to explain the winter solstice, not just the astronomy of it, but what such a date portended in terms of work, culture, and mindset. It was in the 1990s, and my favorite answer was, “She was a rap singer, Sister Solstice that mouthed off too much.”
Herdsmen Beneath the Lion Gate
Are we becoming like Dark Age Greeks (1100-800 BC) who wandered amid the ruins of the Mycenaean palaces, curious how such “hemi-gods” and “Olympians” were able to build things like the Lion Gate and the tholoi tombs, so far beyond their own competence that they deemed them the work of all-powerful mythological gods? Or maybe we will become 8th-century AD Greeks and Romans who looted the marble from their predecessors’ temples and majestic gravestones to scavenge the lead seals and the iron clamps or to melt down the stones for lime — or simply to seek shelter in abandoned shrines and temples.
The apocalyptic movies have it wrong: we do not need a nuclear holocaust, earthquake, or asteroid to put us back to The Road. We can get there easily with rising ignorance and illiteracy as we drift among an infrastructure we demand, but do not understand or appreciate: Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Thanks for an unusually thought provoking article, doc.
Decentralized networks are better. Perhaps not cheaper, but for reliency and safety, much better. It’s a bit like putting your entire stake on one bet. If you win, you feel like a genius, but it’s an illusion. Spread it into a thousand bets and you will do better in the long run. Just don’t get envious of the occasional high roller who gets lucky.
The founders knew that, and designed the country for it. Too bad the world pays attention to power-mad charlatans instead of listeing to them. the Great.
I posit that distributed systems are also cheaper — at least, in the long run. They allow for local optimizations that a centralized system cannot tolerate.
I think so too, but there are some situations where economies of scale can overcome the cost benefits of localization. Overall, I think the cost benefit is harder to argue. It’s the resiliency (or translated for societies – the ability to adapt and innovate to changes in the environment) that is both easier to argue, and more powerful in the long haul.
I totally disagree. This is yet another example why private sector, for-profit companies should NOT be allowed to do work that can poison the public and planet. Because of profit incentive, they are bound to cut corners by lowering safety standards, using too few workers, and all the other things everyone sees being done in their own place of work today. The private sector is a complete failure in this area and danger to the environment and humankind. They are also misinforming the public at disasters such as this, the gulf spill, and on and on.
The government, without profit incentive and with verifiable oversight from a publicly elected official, should handle this area. The private sector is fine for making a profit on such things as ice cream cones and widgets but nuclear power, something that impacts us all, is just too much responsibility for them to handle.
You mean like the reactor at, um, Chernobyl was?
Please tell me you’re joking.
A news report last night interviewed a gentlemen who helped design this plant – GE built them – and said they were marketed at the time as a lower-cost alternative. Budget nuclear power plants sounds like a very poor idea to me. GE later anounced the plants – which are all over the world including here in the US -were inadequate for emergencies, and has made “upgrades” to many of them. How was this plant left off the list for being upgraded in Japan of all places? There is no answer to this except desire to cut costs and create more profit so that shareholders can take spa vacations. Isn’t this the same mindset that caused the oil spill in the Gulf? (Cost cutting measures by a wealthy corporation and willingness to risk the health and safety of surrounding communities?) This country can fix a lot, but it can’t turn around corporate greed and disregard for human life…after the damage has been done. The good news is that the newer reactors are much safer. Or so these same corporations tell us. Shoud we believe them? Big business, hands untied, has led to the current recession, a massive oil spill, and now this horror. My heart goes out to the Japanese people.
Please give example(s) of the government actually doing what you suggest in modern times. Yes, the Panama Canal >100 years ago. But how well did the government respond to Katrina in New Orleans? As VDH says, “I could go on…”
“The government, without profit incentive and with verifiable oversight from a publicly elected official, should handle this area.”
Like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were ‘overseen’? As long as political futures are funded by business leaders we will not have anything approaching reliable oversight.
A good example is the current love affair between Obama and GE – how safe do you think nuclear plants built by GE will be under the auspices of the current administration?
Hmm?
The only reason Obama even bothers with lip service to nuclear energy is the $s flowing from GE to his campaign funds. In this respect Obama is a pragmatist – and just another corrupt politician.
Ooh, good point.
A case in point: didn’t the Obama administration allow BP a special deal, bypassing safeguards, to run their ill-fated offshore rig, only to have it explode?
You don’t have to be paranoid to fear the placid inertia of public employees who can’t easily be fired, and who don’t invest much of their own sense of self in the jobs they’re asked to do.
You really think government workers and elected officials produce better cheaper products and services? Wow.
Who runs companies? Who runs government? People. The only difference is that government officials feel an Obama given right to control everyone for their own good. After all, they are the new elite who know what is better for people than they do themselves.
If they enrich themselves and their cronies that is only just for their great services to humanity. If the peons are not better off after all that help it is the untermensch fault for being too stupid to know they are really better off in poverty but taken care of by there betters.
Some few things the government must do but the government officials, elected or otherwise should be even more scrutinized because of the hubris that seems to be a requirement of those who seek it.
While I’m not personally a fan of the Obama administration I think it unfair to blame him for enabling government officials to feel as though they should “control everyone for their own good.” Unfortunately this tendency was around long before Obama was walking and will be around long after his legacy is firmly established alongside that of Jimmy Carter. That is why we always need to push for a small government!
I totally disagree with your view, Praetorian. You start with several unexamined and I believe, totally false, assumptions.
Your first assumption is that the private sector operates ‘for profit’ and that this is, somehow, a bad thing. This unexamined assumption, with its overtone that profit is akin to ‘a sin’ ignores that all societies and all production MUST create wealth or profit. Production in a ‘growth-economy’ must produce more than is consumed. This wealth then returns to the economy in the form of investment: updated machines, research in new methods, more jobs. A society that rejects profit becomes stagnant and even, moves into a depressed and failing economy.
If your production system creates no profit but is simply ‘break-even’ then, the economy cannot invest in growth.
Your declaration that all private companies: ignore safety, cut corners, use ‘too few workers’ (??) is yet another unverified opinion. You are ignoring both govt safety regulations – and – the market. The value of the private market is that the consumer gets to choose between producers. If a private company gets the reputation for shoddy work, poor quality – then, he’ll rapidly find himself out of business. This doesn’t happen in the public service area – where the company or service has no competition!
Your next false and unexamined assumption is that public production is both less costly and safer. As I noted, the key problem with public production of goods and services is the lack of competition. This means that there are no limits to costs; the taxpayer is an open bank – and this is why we see, almost always, that public services overrun stated costs. Indeed, costs always rise when the public service moves in because there are no restrictions to money needs; just get more from the taxpayer!
Then, there is the monopoly effect. Since the consumer has no choice in a market of producers but simply has to accept, and pay for the public service there are no constraints on work quality, work standards, number of workers. The costs explode. And, since the work is not privately owned where the owners/shareholders must balance their budget, then, waste, inefficiency and outright theft increase exponentially. The waste in govt services costs the taxpayer billions every year. I’m sure you are aware of this waste and even, theft.
And we can’t forget the public service unions. These have transformed a focus on the quality of service, to a focus on an elite set of employees. These employees – which must always increase in number, as the union wants to increase its dues and its profits – focus on their own salaries, benefits and pensions. The public service ignores ‘service’ and moves to a focus only on the well-being of these employees. And the union’s profit motive becomes a top priority.
These problems: the problems of increasing costs by public service providers; the issue of waste and theft; the problems of lack of accountability in the quality of these services; the profit motive of the public service unions – has moved more and more governments to privatize services.
Wow. A complete and cogent Fisking. Thank you for this comment to a very thought-provoking essay by Dr. Hanson.
ETAB Under comment #1 in Reply to Praetorian
ETAB – You gave a very good and true perspective. I hope Praetorian can digest your answer and not get indigestion. Young people (and she/he sounds young) are ‘indoctrinated’/'conditioned’ to believe Corporations, profit, wealth, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, ETC..ETC.. are all “evil/sins”. The Fraud in their ideology is Stunning…
SOME POINTS TO CONSIDER:
If cutting out the middleman lowers the price, why are we paying the government to stand between us and the markets?
Why do those who decry modern civilization never live far from shopping centers, drive (old) SUV’s and why don’t they grind their coffee with a stone ax?
Why do those who object to tampering with the environment approve of tampering with the economy? Isn’t the economy also a fragile ecosystem where a sudden change can trigger a devastating chain reaction?
Isn’t the latest economic crisis such a chain reaction?
Yes, it’s incredible how ignorant the ‘left’ are about ‘how an economy operates’. They regard ‘wealth’ as a moral sin – which shows that they haven’t a clue how an economy must operate. Think about how Obama constantly denigrates people ‘who have wealth’; how he states ‘you have enough wealth’; how he insists that ‘wealth must be passed around’. The ignorance is unreal.
Think of it this way. An economy must produce more than it consumes. This enables it to use this surplus to invest in the future. It if doesn’t, then, it can’t enable its people to live in the future.
1) For example, a hunting/gathering economy is non-productive; they don’t grow any plants or domesticate any animals. They just eat what’s naturally around them..and then, when they’ve depleted a region, they move to another area. Fine. But, this economy can only support around 30 people in a such an economic mode because they have no control over their future; they are totally dependent on what is growing and living around them.
2) But in larger populations, where they actually grow crops and raise animals – they can’t consume it all! You have to keep some animals..so that they can produce more animals! You can’t eat all your grain; you have to keep some to sow as seeds next year.
3) In industrial economies, you must produce wealth. Wealth is simply ‘more than is consumed’..and it can be, of course, the actual shiploads of wheat or, the money that is given in return for selling that wheat. But, you must produce more..so that you can maintain the future.
What do you do with this surplus, this wealth? Obviously, you don’t keep it in a sock. You invest it. You and a group of shareholders will invest it..to build a railroad. The railroad has two economic functions: USE and Wealth Production. The USE..is..to use it. The wealth production is generated by its function in carrying loads of goods across the nation. Or people across the nation. And in enabling new towns and new industries to be set up.
Or these shareholders will build a new industrial factory. Or a new research institute to develop new medicines. These, in turn, will also produce wealth.
Wealth enables a society to invest in and live in the future.
4) Obama speaks about ‘wealth redistribution’. This is the height of economic ignorance. You must NOT redistribute the wealth to everyone. For example, economies based around herding of animals (called pastoral nomadic economies)…well, it would be disastrous for the Father to redistribute the herd equally to all his ten sons. The herd, which is the source of wealth, must be kept as one herd, so that it will produce more cattle. Give each son one cow – and your herd is finished.
Equally, if you redistribute the wealth accumulation to everyone, then, they will CONSUME this wealth as individuals or small families..and it won’t be available to invest in the extremely expensive funding needs for large industries, building research centres, etc.
5)What an industrial economy requires, is two types of wealth production. The very rich – who must remain, in proportion, a small amount of the population. These are the investors, who invest their money in massive industrial projects. This capacity-to-invest must not be reduced in an industrial society.
Then, the majority of the population must be small-scale private capitalists, who work in, who set up small to medium businesses. This portion of the population generates medium size wealth in production and trade, it provides the major source of taxes to the govt, and also, saves about 8% for their family investment.
A smaller portion of the population can be non-productive. A key problem in a socialist and welfare state, is that the non-productive portion of the population increases…encouraged by the rhetoric of ‘redistribution’ by the left..and such a ratio imbalance will destroy a society’s capacity to create wealth.
I don’t know if this will help explain things to Praetorian; I doubt it. The problem is, the people brainwashed by the left, focus on the term ‘wealth’ and refer it only to themselves and their desire-to-purchase something. They ought to focus on the whole society, and understand that this society must have the financial means to continue its infrastructure into the future. Therefore, it must produce enough..beyond its current consumption..to fund long term projects and future-oriented activities.
Liberals don’t care how wealth is created or whether there will be anything left for the future or not. They live in the moment, and they want all the wealth they can get, whether they earned it or not, NOW. The ones that aren’t explicit criminals are criminals by neglect.
Obama was head over his heels in debt before he tapped into the Soros gold mine. He was one of the nuts who continually refinanced his home, taking money out each time. He also bore right through book advances well over $100K in the early 90′s. (boy would I like to get my hands on his tax returns from those years. He’s the guy who also doesn’t understand how auto insurance works. He only bought comprehensive because it was the cheapest and was shocked to learn it didn’t cover his car when he ran into somebody. Of course, he concluded he had been cheated by a racist insurance company.) This during a time when he had no substantial income, huge student loans and a growing family and a wife who wasn’t proud. He didn’t care. He just wanted the money. But of course, as the luckiest man to ever live, Rezko, and Soros bought a bunch of Ayer’s biopics, and the economic idiot survived. Now he runs the country and is applying the same principles to 300 million people.
So, in character, the boy king isn’t the slightest bit worried that the national debt exceeds the national income. A bigger better Soros must be out there somewhere, and if he isn’t, well not to worry, Obama will still do ok. He always does ok.
One word: Chernobyl.
I won’t mention the poisoned legacy of Communism. OK, I will: http://www.unep.org/ourplanet/imgversn/86/sakan.html
You almost hit the truth, but went too far in a wrong direction. There is more than plenty of room for private enterprise to manage nuclear power. There’s a place for the government to be involved, too. We operate under that regime right now – and so does Japan. There is, and should be, a tension that balances public interests – inexpensive power vs. public safety.
You put forth a hypothetical where corporate interest is the overriding concern, but Chernobyl shows that complete government control leads to an even worse outcome; from the design of the reactor to the actions taken that precipitated the explosion there was a culture that didn’t take into account the potential problems – all ostensibly overseen by “public” officials. Who didn’t have that tension because one side was nonexistent.
That could not, and did not happen here (even at Three Mile Island), and won’t happen in Japan. The profit motive does a lot, but it also recognizes the need to do the best job it can for the money.
Government-only control is simply contraindicated by history, and no matter how much you say “it will be better this time”, that won’t change – they simply don’t have the right incentives.
Did I just read the most, without a doubt, ignorant, audaciously, spectacularly stupid assembly of nonsense ever written in reply to a Vic Davis summary of ideas. This is either spontaneous satire or indulgent sophistry. I sight one example, two brothers working in a bicycle shop in Dayton Ohio, who without government support and centralized oversight just happened to produce a very important product to the benefit of mankind. Stuff that in your environmental mojo worthless assumptions.
That is why the environmental conditions in the old Soviet Union were pristine while ours are so awful. Yes, I can see your point. The one on top of your head, unless, of course, this is a parody and then, well done !
Hence the $400 toilet seat. The governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. Snow management in New York. A bureaucracy undeniably bloated. Ad infinitum.
Fourteen trillion in debt and counting. And you are a defender of the government as our collective guardian? Take the pension and move on man.
You are too funny to be working for free.
wow …are you being sarcastic (rhetorical).
that is complete drivel and if you cann’t see that there is no way I am going to try to explain it to you.
shouldn’t you be on huffington post ?
The greatest polluters in the history of he World have been governments, i.e. the Soviet Union and China. No private business can cause that type of damage. Why: Other institutions, including the competition and the govt, keep business honest to a large degree.
I’ll quibble with VDH’s terminology. [Side note: my research is in Complex Adaptive Systems/Networks - which are decentralized, self-organized and very robust systems.]
The terminology ought to be ‘decentralized versus centralized’. Not ‘decentralized vs complex’. Again, a Complex Adaptive System, which is what a society ought to be, is decentralized, made up of thousands of ‘nodes’ or mediating information sites that can make decisions, reroute information, come up with local solutions. It can and does handle large populations.
The problem is centralization which is hierarchical, homogeneous, inflexible and indifferent to local situations. This is actually a mechanical model!
And actually, decentralized systems are cheaper, because their manufacturing and distribution costs are relevant to the local production and local consumers..and local competition. Centralized systems are almost always extremely expensive because of the sheer bureaucratic and other ‘energy’ (translate that into costs) required to gather, organize, produce and distribute the same product everywhere.
An outstanding and widely publicised “complex adaptive system” can now been seen under stress in Japan — the production system originated by Toyota and others generally known as “Just in Time”.
Although information on the subject is presently sparse, I believe most if not all the major Japanese automobile producers are shut down. When all or most components are produced just in tiime, the failure of a single supplier can shut the line down. One of the benefits of the inventories the creators of these systems worked so hard to reduce is that they provided a cushion for unanticipated events — one of their intended purposes. The assumption that we can control events that is essential to “Just in Time” does not always hold up.
Great observation about just-in-time manufacturing. The fact is, the vulnerability of a JIT system to disruption has been noted ever since the early 90′s; it’s just that the benefits of reduced inventories were far more tangible than the risks. It will be interesting to see what the Japan disaster does to inventory levels around the world.
ETAB…whatever the correct terminology, I know a couple of things for certain. I know that the origins of this great nation was rather ‘geographically’ centralized for some time…..then became open to western expansion and greatly decentrailized for a very long time…in fact, essentially, until the late 1950′s. Since then, the economies, the social structure and politics have systematically become consolidated and centralized within the States and the nation. Nothing good nor as constitutionally intended for the nation since! These high density populated cancer centers/regions have circumvented the founders and their constitutional intent by ideologically shifting more and more power and control to a centralized government.
Lastly, I know that the economic, social and political disease (cancer) incubated in these areas are going to have to be given some special treament protocols, if you know what I mean, for this nation to survive and rebuild.
Yeah. I often think of this: how much of my “wealth”–such as it is, retirement account, bank account I could access if the internet/electronic networks/ATMs all went down….. or were permanently destroyed. Keep some cash on hand (small bills) and paper copies people….
Proreason…as an entertaining side note. There is a modern day weaponery platform called “Directed Energy…” that can essentially take out a specific area, a region or the whole nations capability to function other than pretty much breath and walk around unhurt. Anything and everything ‘directly or remotely’ associated with the reliance on a computer chip is either disabled or destroyed. It doesn’t take a catastrophic act of nature to create the same kinds of devastating [effects] we’re witnessing involving the nuke power generation system in Japan….to include nuke generators melting down uncontrollable inspite of ANY redundant safety mechanisms…..battery backup wouldn’t be able to be recharged and diesel generators unable to receive more fuel, nearby water hydrants couldn’t be pressurized and fire trucks won’t start or run…backup alarm systems won’t work, telephones won’t work…nothing works or moves….thanks to a SOLE technology that the worlds [existence] has come to be completely reliant upon.
Interestingly, I’m sad to say, I’m liking the idea of such further deveolpment of this weaponery platform system. It just may be the one thing that can decentralized and deconsolidate America’s economies, social structure, infrastructures and national politics.
Just imagine hundreds of thousands and millions of folks in America’s desensely populated cancer centers standing in the streets unable to provide even the most basic of necessities for themselves!
Now us old cowboys out in the country, and our get…well, we haven’t gotten so sucked into such nonsense and can still survive quite well in such an event. Them big city folks chasing all the big money evidently never learn’t money can buy you everything….especially when you can’t even get to your big bucks or all your credit lines. :)
H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” predicts the inevitable indolence of complex and advanced societies.
Benign Neglect should not be construed as a total inability to maintain, rather it is the choice not to do so now.
View the objects around us from a perspective of “what knowledge and experience would it take to construct that, and when did mankind attain that”, and you’ll find that in most cases the answer is that it never required an university degree, and that around 1900 the object existed in its final form. What we’re living in today should really be viewed as an augmented reality, created by the drug of instantaneous communications we’ve become so addicted to that the lack thereof simply paralyzes us.
I recommend every child joins the Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts so that they have a clue on how to “be prepared”.
There is in Japan a greater degree of national, regional and urban homogeniety.
Probably for that reason, there is a greater degree of commonality of the individual sense of “oughtness” (the Deontic to the good doctor) with its relation to “duty” and restraints of conduct.
It is that shared commonality of oughtness that makes up morality that in turn supports civility.
The reason there has been an impressive degree of social trust and cooperation in Japan is because of their demographic uniformity. Notice you don’t see any rioting or looting after a natural disaster in Japan. Since time immemorial, Japan has allowed practically no immigration. The US, the EU, and Australia are following the opposite policy, which can lead only to doom.
Agreed the American news media is doing their usual bad job. Go to the NHK (Japan National Broadcasting) website to see how the Japanese are reporting on their problems, no breathless may,could,possibly talking heads here!
America got so sidetracked in the 1990′s by the Information Superhighway that we let the real highway system go to hell. I realize that road construction is not as sexy as the latest high tech whatever gizmo but people and goods still have to move from point A to point B.
Thus the millions stranded in Tokyo when the trains shut down after the quake, even though there was minimal damage in that area.
Correcto, professor.
The dumbing down of Americans is accelerating, as we pay the wages of the “sin” of always “doing it in the road” for the children.
The key word in your eloquent and edifying takedown of complex societies is FRAGILE.
When more and more people become too expert in only ONE area, and don’t learn about much of what used to be common knowledge, when troubles occur, look out.
I remember being amazed at how smart my father was when it came to fixing things. He helped me write a paper explaining how a car engine worked, when I was in grade school that got an A—that’d be in the 50’s.
A most basic LOT of self reliant learning must have rubbed off on me, because as I got older, L educated myself in cooking, gardening and auto’s—-AND, as George Leonard’s book title put it, “Education and Ecstasy” says it all.
It was such a powerful hoot to be able to, by the book, remove the head and get a valve job, as well as rebuild the carburetor!
However, growing food is what really grounds me. Double digging and following the French intensive biodynamic “grow the soil” method, after removing the kingly grass lawn on the small lot where I now live, has not only provided fresh and tasty vegetables, but also over the years constantly improved the soil.
As I wander around my small town, my utopia side envisions ripped out lawns replaced by Garden of Eden like overflowing healthy soil, producing overflowing vegetables.
That’s why I’m not totally bummed out by the end of world types, saying we’ll run out of land to feed the growing human population.
Small IS beautiful!
But, it will have to be only AFTER some literally earth shattering events cull the dumbed down ignorant masses, in order to cause a great simplifying awakening, that brings such a new “old” way of life.
Yes—the dumbing down of Americans doesn’t just refer to learning about mental subjects, but most essentially has to do with animating core values, led by THE key one: self reliance.
Paradoxically, “they” —-referring to each dependent individual—will soon enough find out that there is no OTHER “THEY”!
Mr. Victor,
The same thought went through my mind, while I sat embarrassed and pondered that old Eagle song Dirty Laundry (improvised):
If anybody overseas actually sees these sordid newscasts, I now better understand the cliche “Ugly Americans…”
Just a reminder: The metaphorical “ugly Americans” in the novel by that name were U.S. Government officials and their hangers-on.
“I wonder how many drivers that soar by even have licenses, insurance, or registration.”
I often wonder how many drivers in California can read English and thus understand the traffic signs that are meant to help them drive correctly.
Traffic signs in English? Now there’s a vanishing species.
(I’m illiterate in all dialects of International Picture Sign.)
In 1966 there was a famous power-outage in the Northeast. Someone in Buffalo flipped the wrong switch or something and the huge blackout encompassed several states. I remember quite well being plunged into darkness that evening and not long afterward, our local, mini-hydroelectric plant, Bull’s Bridge on the Housatonic River had Litchfield and upper Fairfield County right as rain once again while everyone else in the Tri-State area suffered in the dark until the next day.
Those were the days when the term Connecticut Yankee meant tough as the rocky soil we lived on. It is still a point of pride for me altho the self-reliant Yankees are gone, replaced by flaccid, pale, weekenders up from the city demanding services unheard of 50 years ago. Who makes up the volunteer fire department when all the men are 75 miles away at Wall Street and they wouldn’t deign to get dirty fighting a fire anyway? That kind of community involvement is beneath them.
I live in the metro area of Phoenix AZ and it’s often occurred to me how easily it could be isolated and destroyed. It’s not that people wouldn’t be able to escape, but to where? Water and food is pouring into the city every day, and if it were cut off, along with the power, in the middle of summer…
I had my AC go out a few years ago, in August, and it was still 106° inside at 4am. I don’t want to think about what would happen if that happened large scale. And there is enough food in the warehouses to keep things going for a couple of weeks, at best. Every business in Arizona is required by law to give water to anyone who asks; that gives you an idea of how important water was historically. Right now nobody seems to care much about it, but it’s another point of weakness. The fragility of this huge metro area is one reason I want to move out of it. I live on the outer edge, so could get into the desert fairly quickly, and I know many nearby places where there are springs, so I could do alright with a few people. None of those springs could supply water for more than a couple of hundred people at most.
Lots of other cities are in the same state. They were built without much thought for disasters, man-made or otherwise, but rather for convenience. Nothing wrong with that, in itself, but Japan is showing us that failing to plan is planning to fail. Many Japanese are rising to the challenge and demonstrating their courage and will, which is one benefit of disasters–some will find out they’re better human beings than they ever realized before. Others will fail in the clutch, and others will demonstrate their inhumanity.
There’s no way to prepare for any eventuality, and there’s no way to build things that can’t be knocked down by nature’s wrath. Still as the saying goes, an ounce of prevention saves a pound of cure. We ought to try to afford that ounce at least.
I remember when I saw “Cloverfield” I was astonished that all these people living in apartments had no emergency kits. I thought ‘surely after 9/11 nobody in New York is without a 72-hour kit at least!’ I can’t imagine living in a place like that, where there’s no escape except by water or air. If the only escape is by water, I’d have an inflatable canoe in my 72-hour kit! Or at least a life jacket and some flippers. I hope that Japan’s misery (and heroism) can teach us at least so much, that being prepared is not just a motto for Boy Scouts, but a rule to live by.
And to think people lived here before electricity and AC. Wet sheets around the windows.
Meanwhile, one of Prof Hanson’s many insights was of the individualists who founded Arizona and put those principles into law. That is why thousands of midwesterners and Californians are pouring in every year adding people to this desert.
You think the drivers are bad? That high speed rail won’t have the needed mechanics? Try this one on for size, the biggest machine in the US is our power grid. The schools (colleges) that used to teach Power Systems (part of Electrical Engineering) have stopped teaching for multiple reasons – lack of students who want to do ‘sexier’ subjects, lack of professors who have retired, etc. This means that the very Engineers needed to keep our electrical grid going are aging and retiring. We will all be in the dark soon.
And unlike the Greeks of 9th cent BC, or 8th Cent AD there is no ‘space’ for our ignorant collapse. As news from outside the US shows (West Bank Friday/Saturday, Teran, Bejing, etc) we as a species are now close enough that such a collapse onto our collective stupidity will result in a war of conquest from the outside. Fought with guns or demographics, using all the other tools available to either like terror.
We really are at a point in the next few years (maybe 10 or 50 or 1 or 2) where what we have will be the high water point in history as we head into another Dark ages – and it is all completely avoidable.
A very disappointing article. Not only is it in very poor taste to use a cataclysm of this magnitude to draw a flattering contrast to one’s own culture, but the comparison is simply wrong.
A military historian should know better than anyone the resourcefulness and sheer toughness of the Japanese population. In the later years of WW II, Japan made do without any of the resources Americans took for granted–and we still groaned constantly about the privations imposed by what was, compared to the rigors suffered in Japan, very minor inconvenience.
Really, Mr. Hanson: very poor taste, very poor indeed.
But the US won WWII, in part because the decentralized model permitted employment of greater resources, even employing the resources of the Soviet Union and Italy, German-Japanese allies in the beginning of the war.
Further, centralized control is only achieved by collection of data and transmission of the data to the centralized controller. That takes time, resulting in lags to the system response. At high gain (when you try to get things to happen faster) the laging controller becomes unstable, and less efficient. In the worst case, the centralized controller is still shipping water (based on old data) and that blocks shipping of food and medicine, needed (as is known by local authorities).
The article praises Japan in the stongest terms. To say it denigrates the country is ludicrous.
Hanson’s essay was chilling, a very interesting piece.
Even more chilling is that someone would use his work as an occasion to praise Imperial Japan.
Nothing the Japanese did during WWII is worthy of praise or admiration. The entire Japanese effort was dedicated to theft, slavery, murder and mindless cruelty. The “rigors suffered in Japan” during the war were well earned and righteously inflicted by a population that supposedly “groaned constantly.”
And after crushing that sick, cruel culture, America created Modern Japan. Which is another feat we cannot repeat, witness our stalling efforts in the Middle East.
Yours is a rare comment indeed, in its combination of relatively good writing ability and absolutely abysmal reading comprehension.
How’s about more people? Suburbs generate more babies. More concrete for driving, makes more babies. That’s pretty much betting on dynamism. There’s an article in City Journal about a study showing that condominimums are as good birth control as condoms. It’s fairly amazing.
The poor Japanese. I am hoping that the world relief organizations jump into help. I can only pray, here, for their healing and safety.
Jane Jacobs writes about decentralization, too. Cities with small, decentralized businesses build a survivable network with flexibility. She cites Manchester and Birmingham. Manchester had big factories, and then they wilted. Birmingham kept on in unremarkable prosperity.
I know I’ve read that the measure of prosperity is how many fauborgs a city generates- how many businesses on the margins of the town. I think it works with the observation from David Brooks about the unremarkably fronted office parks across suburban America, the ones building the enormously strange parts of our advanced economy.
Dr. Hanson,
I understand the premise regarding centralized Athens and the later decentralized Greece…. but do you really think the analogy applies to suburban America?
I can see Kansas and Iowa farmers getting along just fine following some infrastructure smashing catastrophe, but suburban New Jersey or DC or San Jose?
I have read the book “One Second After” and it scared me like no other. The hungry masses that became an uncivilized mob in the wake of an EMP attack were not solely urban dwellers, but suburbanites who had no more capability of providing life’s necessities than did the playwrights of Athens….
America got so sidetracked in the 1990′s by the Information Superhighway that we let the real highway system go to hell. I realize that road construction is not as sexy as the latest high tech whatever gizmo but people and goods still have to move from point A to point B.
But the urban super-planners who have hijacked our diverse American dreams, to aggregate them into their exclusively-owned Vision, haven’t got the brains to see that a road network is far more efficient at moving people and goods under stressed conditions than a mandatory collective railway from A to B.
Their obsessession for getting us out of our cars is a big contributor to the political rejection of maintaining and expanding capacities of road networks. Citizen mobility ranks behind ‘community organization’ with them. Self-created routing and scheduling allows us to include C and D and even E in our daily rounds – while the planners even now have their sights and pruning shears aimed at those vulnerable extensions of our own dreams.
Don’t worry that BA in social studies will get you through a famine or dark age.
Reading your article I’m reminded of the brilliance of E Pluribus Unum. When the country has relied on the resilience of the people we rarely go wrong. When we put our faith in some centralized authority to dictate we rarely succeed. Out of many, one. Profound words that would do good for many politicians of all stripes to remember each and every day.
Bonny Kate mentioned the NY 1966 power outage. One of the features of this outage was that after the grid went out, it was not possible to restart the generators…because they required electricity for their field magnets, and this electricity came from, you guessed it, the grid! No one had thought there was a serious danger of the whole thing being out at once. Restart was not possible until portable generators were brought in to allow restart of the main ones.
These days there is a lot of talk about the benefits of making the grid more interconnected, partly because it would allow better compensation for the inherent unreliability of wind & solar. I’m skeptical, because sooner or later, failures will occur that will propagate to the limits of interconnectedness.
That more interconnected “smart grid” will be promoted as more efficient, allowing for more optimal allocation, which of course is more “centralized”. That interconnectedness however leaves it more vulnerable to a cyber-terrorist or a small team of cyber-warriors who could easily bring the system down.
I’m less confident than Dr. Hanson that “contemporary elite engineers” can build a high-speed rail system, at least in the US, except at enormous cost. (China, of course, has shown it can do it.) Could we today construct a Hoover Dam, a Golden Gate Bridge or an Empire State Building as we once could? Before you answer, think about Boston’s “Big Dig” and New York’s “Ground Zero” site. Anything like those earlier projects is simply unaffordable today and takes too long to complete. A nuclear power plant? Ten years if you’re lucky.
In a word, we need (to be) MacGyver.
I have been astonished at the density of people in Japan living on deltas and tidal flats that are surrounded by high hills. It is a recipie for the disaster that occurred. Now that these areas are mostly destroyed the rebuilding effort should center around planning for the next tsunami. Certainly, nuclear plants should be situated on land certain to remain out of reach of floods, and built securely into the bedrock.
That’s basically all there is to Japan: mountains and flats. Long and narrow islands with long seacoasts. People live in the flats because 1) that’s where they grow the rice 2) that’s where its easier to build roads and houses. Concentration is so high because it is a mountainous country.
Thank God I’m rural. Everything I read this morning is profoundly depressing. Our politicians are playing patty-cake, here in CA govt. invades every aspect of life. Fragile is right – and the threats to our fragility are ominously near. Watched some alarmist video about the economy collapsing. Supposedly by finance wizards – what if they are right? What happens when the grocery trucks don’t come, the power fails, money becomes meaningless, the phones go down…
I have ground I can plant, not very productive decomposed granite, but something beats nothing. On a water well, not very productive either, but adequate. Weak link is electricity for the well. Think I’ll prioritize getting some solar panels. A generator wouldn’t do, in a remote area the gas would be gone in hours. By a fluke, have some books about making soap, tanning leather, etc. in ways our ancestors did.
In ‘Lucifer’s Hammer’ most of the city folk die off, but plenty are left (including criminal gangs) who trek to rural areas to try to survive, and end up warring with rural residents. I pray we never see it. Doubt I could shoot people over potatoes, I’m too soft to compete in that kind of world.
Wasn’t the inevitable failure of a hyper-centralized network the theme of Issac Asimov’s Foundation series? The center did not hold, the Galactic Empire fell, and so Hari Seldon established his Foundation to try to reduce the 30,000 years of darkness to approximately 1000. “The Mule” was the classic Black Swan event. But I recall side stories about people in charge of various pieces of complex machinery not knowing how to fix things, and so the decay inevitably crept in…
We are probably subjected to more radiation from the TSA SCANNERS than the Japanese have been thus far. All this hysteria was predictable. Everyone on the left who idolizes France never mentions how most of their energy is produced with nuclear power. What no one seems to want to say is the fact that Japan built a nuclear reactor in an UNSTABLE part of the world, and having just suffered from a natural disaster which will be one for the record books, seems to be holding up against all the doomsday scenarios hyperventilated in the MSM. To warn that building a reactor in the United States is a comparably dicey affair as it is in Japan is such a grotesque lie. In New York, our Olympian god ex Governor Cuomo shut down a nuclear facility in Long Island based upon the same hysteria and we have been up to our necks in massive utility bills as a consequence. All based on what if…
I don’t like former governor Cuomo, but he was not responsible for the Shoreham nuclear plant fiasco. Blame the enviroweenies. Their continual lawsuits produced multiple construction delays, added unbudgeted-for billions for unneeded safety enhancements, and caused successive startup delays. LILCO gave up because it could see no end to the lawsuits and because it could not borrow more money after spending six billion dollars over sixteen years and not generating a single watt-hour of electricity. The high electricity costs in Long Island result from LILCO’s successful petition for increased rates to pay off some of its Shoreham-related debts. I was living on Long Island when that rate change went into effect.
Soon after 9/11 I mulled what the US should do in response to the threat of WMD terrorism. My conclusion was that we should decentralize and disperse, and that progress in communication technology was making that feasible.
I am reminded of Jose Ortega y Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses, though I suspect that VDH would look to a different source for salvation than Ortega y Gasset might prefer.
Thanks for the update on life in California. It makes us eccentrics in fly-over country grateful to still be maintaining our infrastructure and building more and wider roads. We have made different choices since many did not believe the government was our savior, so we’ve spent more on roads and bridges and less on government promises. Infrastructure is a top priority since our entire modern economy depends upon it.
The city has been portrayed throughout English literature as an inhuman environment, a place where being anonymous leads to all kinds of problems and temptations. Charles Dickens wrote about some of those aspects of city life. However, he lived in the early days of the industrial revolution which was a factor in centralizing people around labor-intensive factories. We are already in a new age where distance is increasingly irrelevant and robots have replaced the menial factory jobs. Our call centers are often not even in the same country. Evidence of the change is everywhere as the electronic age is transforming all institutions. McLuhan, whose predictions of 45 years ago are eerily proving correct, said we would be freed of cities as the world became a ‘global village’.
The government elites are never the creative ones in any society, so they are still stuck in the industrial age vision of Utopia, while many areas have moved on. A Heritage Foundation article recently pointed out a 2009 U.S. Dept of Education report found “K-12 students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those who took the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction”. Texas now offers a state-wide online charter school for high school students. The times are changing, and increasingly it looks like McLuhan was right. For creative minds, it is a promising future, an exciting time to be alive.
Since the U.S. cannot be compared to a tiny nation like Japan, constrained by its geology to the perimeter of its mountains, it is assumed this article refers to California. It would be comparable, since the Pacific fault has always been a time-bomb waiting to destroy man’s infrastructure in the golden state, just as the threat of the earth’s slippage has been for Japan. It might be time for considering exodus.
I also live in the Phoenix metro area and have had the same concerns – especially about water and cooling in an emergency (my back-up is to cool with and also drink my swimming pool, sterilized with pool chlorine).
One area where things have become more brittle is the just-in-time trend throughout the economy. Resulting from advances in computer technology and implementation of clever processes pioneered by Walmart, this has reduced our costs significantly. However, it also means that, if transportation goes out, we run out of everything useful much more quickly than in the past.
Charles, if you check you’ll find the Japanese originated ‘just in time’, and it was pioneered here by Ross Perot for General Motors vast network of suppliers and assembly plants.
I too thought of the just-in-time issue when I saw the series of events occurring in Japan. JIT is a genuine manmade supply disaster waiting to happen.
Business, industry, government, individuals – all rely on a constant, uninterrupted flow of food, materials and goods. Increasingly, these essentials travel by road not train. You could instantly choke off north, south, east and west supply networks by blocking, closing down or destroying one or two major highway interchanges, such as I-75 and I-70.
Ironically, Walmart didn’t invent just-in-time, the Japanese claim it’s their invention (as part of Lean engineering principles). No stockpiling means little/no need for warehouses.
My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan. Meanwhile, we’d be smart to learn vicariously and prepare ahead.
This article reminded me of a favorite Robert A. Heinlein, he was also not a fan of specialists.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
An equally good parallel to that of the Greeks wandering amid the ruins of their predecessors is of the Anglo-Saxons finding superstition in the Roman ruins that they skulk in for protection from the elements…see the Anglo-Saxon poem “The Ruins.”
Yes Dr. Hanson I’m one of those people that drive the 101 every day. 20 years ago I could go from the westside of the San Fernando Valley and get to my teaching job on the eastside of the valley in 15 minutes. Now leaving at 6:50am, I get to my destination in 35-45 minutes. Yes Doctor, that 405-101 inter-change is completely ridicules. Can anybody come up with an idea like a double-decker freeway or maybe bring Walt Disney’s idea of a monorail system to the valley.
Dr. VH,
I often have this conversation with friends, whether or not this current generation could duplicate much less emulate our fathers and grandfathers’ great deeds?
Could we find the collective will to build the Panama Canal or send man to the moon again? Sadly, I think I do know the answer. CS Lewis said it best, we are in danger of becoming “Men without Chests”…
One thing to be careful of with you comments about favoring de-centralized places to live; you are creaping into the mindset that would argue against living in any community larger than 100-200 people. The current complex, but properous, society we live in is dependent on cities of various sizes. The cities create the interactions that spark intellectual, technical, cultural and wealth creating progress. We have progressed so far because we have gone beyond the subsitance of what we can grow or create within our town or it’s immediate area.
Let’s keep our perspective. Japan has not desended into caos because of societal cohesiveness amidst the complexity.
It is with deep regret and sorrow that I post the following link. Some will be angered by it. Some will simply dismiss it it.
A few may understand.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/announce/2011/2/0210_02.html
My heart goes out to the poor souls who are suffering.
MAY THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD WAKE UP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
Parts of the Psalms that were read on that day -
By David. Fight my antagonists, O Lord, battle those who battle against me. 2. Take hold of shield and armor and arise to help me. 3. Draw a spear, and bar the way before my pursuers; say to my soul, “I am your deliverance.” 4. Let those who seek my life be shamed and disgraced; let those who devise my harm retreat and be humiliated. 5. Let them be as chaff before the wind; let the angel of the Lord thrust them away. 6. Let their path be dark and slippery; let them be chased by the angel of the Lord. 7. For without cause have they laid their nets in the pit for me; without cause have they dug [pits] for my soul. 8. Let darkness come upon him unawares; let the very snare that he hid trap him, in darkness he will fall in it.
Let not those who hate me without cause rejoice over me; [let not] those who despise me without reason wink their eye. 20. For they speak not of peace, rather they scheme deceitful matters against the broken of the land. 21. They opened their mouths wide against me, they said, “Aha! Aha! Our eyes have seen [his misfortune].” 22. You saw, Lord, be not silent; my Lord, be not distant from me. 23. Rouse and awaken Yourself to my judgement, to my cause, my God and my Lord. 24. Judge me according to your righteousness, Lord my God; let them not rejoice over me. 25. Let them not say in their hearts, “Aha! We have our desire!” Let them not say, “We have swallowed him!” 26. Let them be shamed and disgraced together, those who rejoice at my trouble; let them be clothed in shame and humiliation, those who raise themselves arrogantly over me.
Mercy has turned to Judgement.
Psalm for the day the Tsunami hit Japan-
” A psalm by David. Render to the Lord, children of the mighty, render to the Lord honor and strength. 2. Render to the Lord the honor due to His Name; bow down to the Lord in resplendent holiness. 3. The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders; the Lord is over mighty waters. 4. The voice of the Lord resounds with might; the voice of the Lord resounds with majesty. 5. The voice of the Lord breaks cedars; the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon. 6. He makes them leap like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild ox. 7. The voice of the Lord strikes flames of fire. 8. The voice of the Lord makes the desert tremble; the Lord causes the desert of Kadesh to tremble. 9. The voice of the Lord causes the does to calve, and strips the forests bare; and in His Sanctuary all proclaim His glory. 10. The Lord sat [as King] at the Flood; the Lord will sit as King forever. 11. The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.”
Fear of G-d is the beginning of Wisdom.
nothing to understand. it seems self explanatory and sad.
Education in the 19th century got us to the moon but education in the 20th got us schools filled with over paid Teachers graduating fewer children (dumber then before) into colleges that produce PhD’s in liberal Arts (only good for padding the college bank account)! Today’s education system isn’t worth half what was available in the late 19th and early 20th century…
There is no greater symbol of the fragile nature of modern living than with the internet. Remove the internet and modern life will come to a grinding halt. No other loss of infrastructure service would impact our daily lives as quickly as losing internet services totally. Taking out our transportation system would be devastating – but think of what that would entail – freeways – railways – bridges – ships – planes etc. That would be a daunting task to an enemy – the internet – not so much. Just a number of well placed well programmed computers.
Attacks occur on a daily basis on this or that web site in what amounts to a ‘training ground’ for China – Russia (yeah – our ‘friend’) – and piss-ant countries like N. Korea and organizations (al qaeda maybe?) to learn how to cause massive disruptions of our digital banking and commerce traffic. Try ordering a truckload of peas and carrots without using the internet in some way. Granted – you may be able to pick up the phone and place the order but you can be sure of one thing – that order will travel over the internet in some way shape or form. You might even be ordering from a company that uses VOIS – Voice Over Internet Service.
We seem to be keeping up with these attacks being made on our internet – but for how long?
Had this conversation with my brother who is doing his “late life” university education. What happens when you remove the internet? Inventory by hand, receipts by hand, ledger books. About twenty years ago *ahem* I had to do all of that by hand. Not everyone had quite switched over to the new high tech world (I still have to do it when the computer goes down, can’t close business just because the computer goes down, though I get to enter all the receipts and balance when it comes back up). If the internet went down right now, there are still enough people around to remember how to do it, but I am not sure that in twenty to thirty years, that knowledge won’t be “ancient history”.
I don’t think that would mean that people wouldn’t eventually figure it out, but the angst and pain between, the recreating of the wheel…OMG?
I had the surreal experience a few years back of having the power go off in a large chain office supply store. They herded us out of the store, insisting that we couldn’t purchase anything because “the computers were down”–this, in a store FULL of sales books, writing utensils, calculators, batteries, and cash boxes. I suspect that none of them would have known how to write up a sale, or figure the tax. It was laughable, and yet sobering at the same time.
Yes, it is well known phenomena: generally declining knowledge and curiosity within populace living in peace for a long time. It was described many times in the past both in literature and natural sciences. Literary example can be found in I. Asimov “Foundation” series, while in science and engineering it called entropy.
A bit of a tangent here, but this reminds me of the current trend in American warfighting. We seem to be relying on massively complex (not to mention expensive) centralized systems to do battle with little bands of men who carry surplus weapons and cobble together devastating (and headline-making) bombs out of battlefield junk. Does this make any sense?
I have this vision of a “future soldier” covered with body armor, viewing the world through sensors, and plugged into a vast C3I network being put out of action by a mujahedeen hitting him in just the right spot with a rock.
Would it be better to just fight the bastards? We know our men are going to get killed, same as we know oil platforms blow up and nuclear power plants melt down. Yet we keep building more and more complex “systems” to try and get the job done while making everything totally safe. Can we live sanely, as risk-averse as we seem to be?
A small point here…while we have some massively complex military systems and logistics, we also have a form of decentralized warfare that probably escapes most viewers of the war from 9000 miles.
First, let me point out that this concept is why the Marines insist on maintaining their own capabilities (to a point, obviously they still have to hitch a ride with the Navy). everything from air and land logistics to some forms of littoral naval ability. Also, the concept of every marine being a “rifleman” regardless of his other MOS (specialty).
Beyond that, we do a considerable amount of training “special forces” who can operate in very small units, survive off the land and who have frequently been without direct support from the “complex” systems for a very long period of time.
This training has been aggregated to a degree throughout he fighting forces. Every member of a squad is now trained in basic life saving techniques. Not just “first aid”. Every squad is trained in small unit tactics, part of the whole, but they have learned to be mobile, egress, ingress and fight as a small unit.
This has actually been an ongoing activity since, believe it or not, the Revolutionary War and before. It is, in some ways, an ingrained cultural idea that likely came from those first settlement days when small communities had to adapt to a very mobile enemy (indigenous warriors) and the ground they fought on. It has become our cultural heritage.
It would also be unwise to imagine that the great armies involved in WWII would have made actually succeeded if it were not for the small unit tactics and abilities that we trained in and executed. Could Bologne have held out if not for small groups of men standing in the breaches and holding off entire tank units? Small units had to be able to move forward and secure bridge heads with little coverage or support from larger units or air cover.
What I am getting at is that, as complex as some systems seem to be, such as the military, there is still the idea that every soldier is an individual warrior and that small units with “local” leadership (why we spend so much time training NCOs) can be so effective. (Contrary to popular belief, we did relearn those lessons the hard way in Vietnam)
In fact, it has been one of the reasons that we have been able to defeat even larger military organizations who were much more centralized. They could not react in time.
Now, honestly, the AQ folks have some advantageous, they are very decentralized. But, if you ever read Mao on Guerrilla War, you will learn that eventually, for the guerrilla’s to actually rule a nation or even a territory, they eventually have to coalesce and become, not guerrillas, but an army with a form of centralized command and control.
That is AQ’s downfall. They have so many small groups, many leaders, competing plans and lack of control that they cannot compete in the final step of control and governance(why we keep finding their “leadership” and attacking it; keeping them from becoming Mao’s “army”).
Kat-Mo,
A related point which is also quite important. Our small units and distributed leadership are very offensive minded. Most armies seem to still rely on the type of training Kipling wrote about:
Our forces have a disconcerting (to the enemy) tendency to attack even when surprised, hurt, and badly outnumbered.
Regarding your comment about the Dark Ages Greeks, I sometimes wonder how much of our technology–the huge advances in science, machines, and information we’ve made since the 18th century–would survive a worldwide loss of western civilization, such as in the wake of an asteroid strike. We’d lose the semiconductor overnight, because only a handful of scientists and engineers know how to make or maintain complex electronics. We might be able to keep the carbureted internal combustion engine, incandescent bulb, and cased ammunition, because a skilled mechanic can work on those with hand tools and a little ingenuity. But I think we’ll lose even those because of the close tolerances required. We might keep the steam engine and a simple electric generator, but only in those areas where some mechanical skill survives. In short, we might revert to the 1880s. And if the destruction is rapid enough and takes out enough people with mechanical skills and a sense of history, we could go back to draft animals and bows and arrows. A Canticle for Leibowitz, indeed.
Interesting analysis. I’ve been thinking that we would fall back about 100 years if a real catastrophe happens. Of course, it wouldn’t be a perfect fit. The ability to fly would probably survive. Modern pharmaceuticals probably wouldn’t. Agricultural advances would probably be remembered. Laser technology would disappear. The internet would begin degrading immediately and probably disappear within a year or two, depending on the form of catastrophe.
I wonder if anyone has thought to preserve the key building blocks of modern technology in a more permanent form than paper or bits. It took more than a millenium to recover all that the Romans knew.
I wonder if anyone has thought to preserve the key building blocks of modern technology in a more permanent form than paper or bits.
As I understand it, some organization – I’ve forgotten which one – examined this issue a few years back and considered all known methods of information storage, including very old ones and modern digital ones. They came to the conclusion that the best way to store information for the long term was to use books printed on acid-free paper that were stored in a controlled environment.
…I sometimes wonder how much of our technology–the huge advances in science, machines, and information we’ve made since the 18th century–would survive a worldwide loss of western civilization….
Science Fiction has many books devoted to this idea. In fact, apocalyptic fiction is often considered a sub-genre of science fiction. One series that particularly comes to mind as a result of your remarks is S. M. Stirling’s Nantucket Series, starting with Island in the Sea of Time. The premise is that an initially unexplained Event causes the modern day island of Nantucket to be moved back in time to 1250 BC, which is apparently rendered quite accurately. Therefore, only Nantucket from our own time exists in this earlier time and is forced to be utterly self-sufficient in a hostile and dangerous world.
I have not read the whole series but it is interesting to see how, starting with only a small machine shop, they rebuild the technical skills and technologies that they had before the Event. It’s considerably more optimistic about the capacity of humans to regain this prowess than most of the apocalyptic fiction out there. Whether the optimists or the pessimists are more likely to be right in the event of some catastrophe is something I hope we never find out!
Great essay. Dr. Hansen should go look up the 50′s era short science fiction story called “March of Morons” by Kornblum. It touches on exactly this issue over half a century ago, but taken to an extreme.
Slight correction; that would be Cyril Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons”.
We have raised entirely too many Sons of Martha.
I think you mean the Sons of Mary; the sons of Martha are the ones who get things built, done, repaired. With little or no approbation from the others.
SteveH,
Right you are… A surplus of the sons of Mary, and a critical shortage of the Sons of Martha.
Some essential services, and esp. the military, could use some decentralization, if not complete isolation, from the world wide web. The questions are, will the Chinese, or N. Koreans, or Russians, or any of America’s enemies stumble upon the techniques to hack our electrical grids, or our nuclear reactors, or our military satellites, or our nuclear arsenal? My guess is that they are trying to do so.
Paraphrasing Paul Tillich, the danger of technology is that humans rely on it without unerstanding it.
i have been making plans for the devolution of society.it used to seem paranoid but now i dont think so.so well see if im right.im betting im right
Dr. Hanson mentions all sorts of bottlenecks where a slight increase in the “Friction” inherent in living in the urban environment leads to either chaos or paralysis. I have to note that:
1) Our country has more than one mortal enemy in the world.
2) They, or their agents, are already here; and even if they were not our deliberately non-existent borders mean that they could arrive at any time.
3) Those enemies have planners, who are surely cognizant of the problems inherent in our system.
4) They know what it would take to increase friction at times, places, and in combinations of their choosing to our grave disadvantage.
Natural disasters are not the only things we have to worry about; and even despite the San Andreas fault, the New Madrid Fault, and the volcanic bubble under Yellowstone, they are not the disaster that is most likely to strike.
I was having an online discussion of the situation in Japan today, and the potassium iodide pills being handed out came up. I strongly advised my friends to get a sufficient supply for themselves and their families. No, I am not at all afraid of nuclear reactors. The odds of a 9.1 earthquake destroying one and irradiating the countryside here are minuscule, compared to the near certainty that some terrorist is going to set off a dirty bomb somewhere in our country in the next few years.
Subotai Bahadur
If we want to decrease our vulnerability to disasters, we have to stop outsourcing our engineering and informational talent to foreign sources, and we have to stop allowing Muslims to settle in non-Muslim countries – including our own. Mass deportations of enemy aliens should have occurred BEFORE 9-11 – after the FIRST attack on the WTC many years before. If our presidents weren’t a bunch of disgraceful fools, that would have taken place.
http://fora.tv/2009/02/13/Dmitry_Orlov_Social_Collapse_Best_Practices
Very amusing account of how Russians survived societal collapse, and some comparisons to the US. Worth listening to.
8th century Greeks were ahead of the crowd in Omaha. Omaha World-Herald reported again (same story last year) that thieves are stealing sewer grates and manhole covers.
Obama must be defeated.
To see where today’s dunces are taking our society, you need look no further than the motion picture Idiocracy…
I might bring your attention to the fact that hollywood might actually be on the same page as Dr. Hanson. Have you ever noticed that all of their disaster movies have either:
a) Urbanites and Suburbanites moving out into the countryside for survival?
b) that the people surviving mass catastrophes are usually in small towns or agricultural areas, pulling together, using their farm learning to adapt and overcome? (Jericho comes to mind).
Why do the Urbanites, etc move out to the country, because there is food, shelter and people with guns willing to protect, shelter and feed.
Of course, there is the other part of that equation where the country hicks are a bunch cannibals waiting for unsuspecting urban rubes to stumble into their cooking pots. Wonder what that says about some folks’ perception of rural survival.
It will all fall apart due to good ‘ole “human error” and sheer American stupidity. Who can forget the LA subway “engineer” who glanced down for his cellphone booty call, but glanced up too late, leaving behind a pile of dead amidst the wreckage. How many near-miss mid-air collisions can be chalked up to “human error?” And what about the chain of events that can result from “human error,” i.e., the union-protected county employee is too busy doing her Facebook updates that she forgets to put the extra vector control task on the weekly schedule, the county pest control worker is too busy watching internet porn on the job to notice, and a rat has a heart attack on the wires and knocks out the entire grid of a major U.S. city. Demand an answer and what do you get? A mumbled series of incomprehensible explanations that always begin with “Well, I guess…” Americans can no longer be trusted to save their own behinds. We’re finished folks. Stock up on lentils and water.
As Pontius Pilate said to Ben Hur in the 1959 movie of the same name, as he discussed the downfall of bad man Messala:
“What he did had its way with him… Where there is greatness, great government or power, even great feeling or compassion, error also is great. We progress and mature by fault.”
The Japanese and the world… shall learn, then earth shall still turn… and more faults await more learning.
I have no desire to live in the city, but appreciate those who do, who leave some space for me out in the semi-rural burbs. Sure, I have a big garden, two woodstoves, a generator, and hunt for a amall fraction of my food, but there is no way that I can pretend that I am not hugely dependent on a functioning society to supply me most of my needs from electricity to gasoline to cheap food.
The Walmart model brings us good stuff, cheap, but separates us more and more from the production of this stuff. The “Buy American” program may need to be revived. Ironically, some of the same people who insisted on buying American 10-20 years ago, now claim they will never buy another GM or Chrysler car. Well, there is always Ford, I guess.
Praetorian you ignore history to your own peril. Do you know how many men died during the US development of the atom bomb? How about in during the Russian experiments with nuclear reactors? Both governments but good men at terrible risk, how be it the Russians far exceeded the US. Read the histories of large centralized governments, they were ALWAYS reckless, careless, muniplative, and in the end destructive to their citizenry. In contrast look at the great successes in the history of industrialization, steel, rubber, fuels, cars, trains, airplanes, computers, telecommunications, all were tremendous successes that changed lives without drastic loose of life because they were not government programs or government run. Even NASA’s success was impossible without private industry. Governments always corrupt, manipulate, and finally destroy industry.
We are all Japanese now.
A couple of thoughts to offset the jist of your piece. In NYC, people WALK a lot. Strap on the mukluks and you’re good. Furthermore, the subways are virtually unaffected by snow. NYC schools hardly EVER close, compared to the knee-jerk closures of nearby suburban communities. On the resiliance of suburbs? Can grow their own food? I have a home in suburban CT and consider myself a pretty good (flower) gardener. In the summer, I plant tomatoes. Some years I get great tomatoes. Some years, such as a couple of years ago, none. It has occurred to me that if I had to grow my own vegetables to survive, that would be a pretty uncertain proposition. On a separate note, I suspect that as baby boomers approach decrepitude, urban living will look more and more attractive, for a number of reasons, including easy access to taxis and public transportation that works.
As always, Mr. Hanson, brilliant essay. We do live in an extremely complex and fragile world, and it would not take too much to disrupt it.
May I recommend two books that deal with disruption:
One Second After, by William Forstchen, about an EMP attack on the US
http://www.onesecondafter.com/
Patriots, A Novel of the Coming Collapse, by James Wesley Rawles, about a financial collapse
https://www.lifelibertyetc.com/Products/Books/Patriots-Surviving-the-Coming-Collapse
ETAB, you explanation is far to eccentric and political.
1) Not even the communist Soviets wanted hunting/gathering economy for gods sake. No one wants to go back to the stone age. Stop pretending anyone would like that.
2) Economics 101, again no one is against profit and wealth. If you would know economics the problems is not wealth and profit itself. See below.
3) What industrial economies only aim is to produce wealth. This is the problem. Government in efficient – non-government profit oriented. Profit in itself does not make good or bad society.
Shareholders will build a new industrial factory ONLY if it brings further profits. It is not a bad things per see, but telling that profit solves the problems is not true. A new research institute to develop new medicines, if the resulting sales of the medicine produces profit. Question: is the profitable medicine the most needed medicine? Not always, that is the inefficiency which has to be put against the inefficiency of any government.
4) OMG, the whole question of economics is about distribution. Every society, even the most capitalistic ones, do redistribute. If you want it or not. The question is how!
5)The facts you demand are not given in today’s society. Capital is largely in the hands of few, there is no middle class left who could be your small entrepreneurs.
I agree with one sentence, that the society has to able to finance it’s future. But exactly for that, wealth, while very important, alone is not enough. It has nothing to do with left or right.
Obviously, you expect to prosper in a country where economic decisions are made for political reasons….like awarding GM to the UAW even though the UAW bankrupted GM in the first place.
Those of us who have observed that wealth has increased by orders of magnitude since free market economies emerged prefer to let the markets make economic decisions, not because we love profits…but because everybody’s standard of living soars.
If you don’t believe it, compare the economic success of the US (and other free-market countries) since 1776 with any other country. It’s so startlingly obvious that even idiots can see what creates wealth for large numbers of people. Even “the poor” in the US have cars, microwaves, ipods and plasma tvs.
Of course, the liberal / progressive / socialist / facist / communist camp doesn’t really care that people in 2011 live like kings did a few decades ago; they only care how THEY live compared to average people. They don’t want the world to be wealthy, they want to be on top of the world.
Michaell – who said anything about the Soviet Union or any people wanting a hunting/gathering economy? I was describing a no-growth, no-surplus, no wealth production economic mode – one which dominated the earth for 100,000 plus years.
As for your statement that ‘no-one is against profit and wealth’, you are ignoring Obama’s many comments against both. And the many comments made by those on the left against both.
I don’t understand your point 3.
Of course shareholders will only build a factory that produces wealth; why should they invest in failure? As for stating that ‘profit’ solves all problems – who said that? My point was that a growth-society has to develop wealth or it can’t support itselt into the future. What problems are you talking about?
Your comment about ‘profitable medicine’ is too ambiguous to be answered. After all, if a particular medicine is needed, then, it will be purchased and thus, profitable.
Of course every society redistributes some common wealth; the point is, that it cannot disempower the private production and ownership of wealth. That is, private production and ownership of wealth, which is the definition of a capitalist economy, has to be dominant. This enables a growth economy. Public ownership of production maintains a no-growth economy.
No, the whole question of economics is not distribution. It’s production – and involves the ownership of production capacities, followed by the private control of distribution (via a market rather than centralized redistribution)…for consumption. Your focus only on distribution ignores production, ownership and consumption.
The function of our govt ought to be to enable and maintain the dominance of a middle class.
Again, you say that ‘wealth is not enough’. I’ve no idea what your point is…
The comparison to small town dwellers persevering over snow is rather apt and timely here. I live in Wayne, NJ, currently going through its annual floods, and my coworkers in the city of Elizabeth are astonished that I have been in to work at the usual time [or at all] every day. Trains and buses are cancelled or delayed but I can drive in along side roads with no difficulties save a few delays at night due to diverted traffic from the blocked main arteries. In contrast a brief, local power failure that closed Newark Airport and shut down traffic lights a few weeks ago caused utter paralysis in Elizabeth since the police closed down streets for ‘priority access’[someone else's priorities] yet only one that I saw was actually directing and moving traffic. Volume was no different than any other day; a few traffic directors at key intersections and ‘priority routes’ would have remained open.
As horrible as it may sound, I only hope that if this nation is to endure any catastrophic events they will be largely limted to any or all of America’s cancer centers of the East and West Coasts and the North and
Eastern States. America needs a ‘clean’ restart void of the social, economic and political plague they have brought down on this nation over so many decades. Sad that so much of the geographical origins of America has turned out to be the very States that has contributed so much in destroying the greatest creation on this earth.
BTW VDH…another enjoyable read, vauable in understanding your personal position and analysis of what was and still could be the greatest nation on earth….with a deep scaling procedure of some kind from the hands of mother nature. :)
Too much benefit to mankind laid upon the ancient Greeks high culture, but it is understandable in the Blind Men and the Elephant sense.
Tyre and Solomon counted for more. That vaunted Greek alphabet was once just a simplified communication device — a phonetic spelling that included a deeper logic in the symbol-glyphs used — used for slave scribblings in Egyptian and/or Tigris valley hideaways. That became Hebrew and Phoenician, and those cultures combined spread it to the world — the Greeks, and even the Chinese, for Chinese ideograms originated in such phonetic glyphs. There’s some link to Sanskrit too, but that seems to await discovery. The clues are probably to be found somewhere near Kerala.
I believe Victor Hansen has mistitled his essay.
Reading the piece, it is apparent that he is implying that of the various complex societies, a federalist society is less fragile than a collectivist one.
A collectivist society/nation is more susceptible to a coup d’etat than a federalist nation: the Collective has just one center of power (economic, political, financial) whereas the Federal Nation has dispersed centers of power.
To take an economist’s point of view, when one says that a complex society is fragile, I ask: “compared to simple societies?” In biology, lifeforms evolve from the simple to the complex and the lifespan and robustness increase with complexity (more or less).
A simple society is poorer than a complex one. A single person will not last as long in the wilderness as a group of, say, 20 individuals.
For those who think they will do fine because they are handy with the machete and gun: do you know how to extract iron ore from the ground? How to reduce the iron ore into iron metal and know how to build from scratch the forges to make the machete and the rifle? Once one is removed from the economic ecology of the (complex) society in which one has lived for so long, one is helpless. Poverty is necessary consequence.
Specialization plays an essential part in wealth creation of a complex society. In a Federal nation, the centers of specialization are few but dispersed; in a Collective nation all specializations are focused in 1 area.
Is there any formula for eternal life of a society (complex or simple)? No. However, the probability of survival is greater with a Federal Nation (different centers of powers doing different things to manage the same external threats) than with a Collectivist nation (where all energy is focused on 1 stategy and if that strategy fails, well, said nation is screwed).
The key is to avoid going from complexity to complicatedness.
Exactly right. Your comments were what I was trying to say – in my comment under Point #1 (Scroll far down!)…but you’ve said it much better. Many thanks for an excellent outline of simple/complex and decentralized vs centralized. I agree – federalism, specialization, decentralization..all aspects of a CAS (complex adaptive system).
What is most lacking in education today is the lack of moral structure. Hate clouds rational thought. And universities are hotbeds of anti-semitism.
What good is making the trains run on time, or at all, if they are being filled with human beings headed for concentration camps?
http://vimeo.com/16779150
Those interested for more on this topic should watch Episode 1 of the brilliant British TV show “connections.” Host James Burke describes how we have constructed “technology traps” for ourselves and that we can be rendered virtually helpless when one of the traps is sprung. One example is the “simple” elevator – each time we enter one, we expect it will work and take us to another floor. But what if it doesn’t? What can you do? Other than call and wait for help -nothing.
Similarly, what if we had to flee to the country in the event of a disaster? Unless we had a Prof Hanson with us, if we made it to a farm, would we know what to do? When do you plant? How do you plow? Can you milk a cow or slaughter a sheep?
The answer is no – most of us would again be helpless.
I think that Mr. Burke generously released his videos for free download on YouTube. Even made over 30 years ago, the shows are fabulous.
“I could go on, but all this suggests another danger of complexity — the inability to transmit knowledge and the dire wages of specialization. The original architects of such systems are now mostly dead, and we, their replacements, often lack their education and respect for civilization’s protocols. The result is that millions of Americans are simply enjoying a system built for them by others which they are not quite able to use, repair, expand — or understand.”
We’ve offshored and outsourced our information infrastructure, including our engineering talent – all too often to enemy nations. Sorry, we don’t need any more programmers or engineers coming here from India – or worse, China or Pakistan – on H-1b visas, when the aging Americans with better skill sets cannot get jobs in their professions here. Allowing this is nothing short of treason on the part of our own government.
I’m one of the millions of Americans affected by this. My life has bee thrown away by America’s elite. Hopefully, I’ll be dead soon and what happens to the rest of you, after what’s left of your rotting infrastructure falls to pieces, won’t be my concern any more.
Shades of Asimov’s Foundation universe.
Outstanding essay. Complexity is an issue more are thinking about now. We have made ourselves far to dependent on government and foreign sources for everything right down to the food we eat. People must understand they have to be prepared to take care of themselves.
Niall Ferguson warns of a post American Dark Age. He makes an analogy to the Roman Empire and the collapse of civilization.
We are diving off a cliff with HSR. The benefits of the proposed CA system are far outweighed by the unknown costs and the marginal gains in efficiency over the transportation infrastructure we have now. As one National Review writer suggested, $7-8/gallon gas will be matched by a corresponding increase in fuel efficiency in the auto’s we drive. HSR will be a massive money loser as well as too expensive to ride. No matter to the proponents. They’ve just about locked it in to the point of no return.
How ironic, that with a plethora of information available through an almost infinite number of sources, our culture continues to ignore the concept that information is useful only when it can be productively applied. More than anything else, our educational system could use more emphasis on teaching critical thinking and practical application of information. Information must be coupled with knowledge and married to wisdom before it can be deemed useful.
As usual, an excellent essay on a timely theme by VDH. Anyone interested in pursuing this line of reasoning should read ‘The Revolt of the Masses’ by Ortega y Gasset. Slim book, medium difficulty, long on insight into modern man.
Since Professor Hanson mentions the Sea Peoples conquering the Mycenean cities, shouldn’t he also mention they were defeated by the highly centralized, despotic Egyptian New Kingdom of Ramses III around 1175 BC (no E) in the Battle of the Delta?
It is even more interesting if one looks at the original tram and other rail lines
that existed in L.A. area and were methodically torn up. The last time I saw that
diagram, it looked suspiciously like many of today’s freeway routes. Probably some
of that due to less difficulty acquiring right-of-way but, nonetheless, the point is the
quality of forward-looking thinking “way back when”.
Well-done, Dr. Hanson, discussing the underlying vulnerability of complex societies to natural and other disasters. Your historical perspective is most valuable, but other fields have something to say on the subject also. Biologists and ecologists have long-cautioned against monocultures, i.e., large tracts of a single variety of plant, esp. crop species. Monocultures are indeed efficient, and with ag-chem inputs, can be very productive. However, that is paid for in increased vulnerability to pests, diseases, fire, and other threats. Extrapolating to human societies, a diversity of form and function is a built-in source of stability for a society. Put another way, “inefficiencies have their own efficiencies.” Just-in-time logistics fail after an earthquake; the result is that stores have inadequate food and pharmacies and hospitals have insufficient medical supplies and drugs on hand as a reserve, and of course much more. In sum, we need to think about how to make modern societies more resilient – and worry less about absolute efficiency.
Robert Heinlein said it best, “Specialization is for insects”… societies and the people who live in them, should be varied, versatile, and adaptable.
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Suggested reading: Ridley Walker
Suggesdted notion: “the specialized perish with the environment that created them” attribution not remembered.
Dr. Hanson, kindly note that “not with a bang but a whimper” came from T.S.Eliot.
thankyou for another very thought provoking essay.
r. brown
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