In 1984 Charles Perrow wrote a book called Normal Accidents, which describes the phenomenon that we commonly call "accidents waiting to happen".
"Normal" accidents, or system accidents, are so-called by Perrow because such accidents are inevitable in extremely complex systems. Given the characteristic of the system involved, multiple failures which interact with each other will occur, despite efforts to avoid them.
In it he argued that some things are just so complex that eventually something will go wrong with them. One example is us. Something eventually goes wrong with our biologies and we expire. Normal accidents may be rare ('It is normal for us to die, but we only do it once.'), but the system's characteristics make it inherently vulnerable to such accidents, hence their description as "normal."
For that reason nature often relies on 'loosely coupled' systems. Humanity consists of separate individuals, not a single collective like the Borg, so that the death of the one is not necessarily the death of all.
In Perrow's analysis, the systems most vulnerable to "normal failure" have two salient characteristics. They are "tightly coupled" and "interactively complex". These are precisely the kinds of centralized structures which bureaucracies love to construct.
A tightly coupled system is like a house of cards. If you move one card all the others must be adjusted to suit. "Strong coupling occurs when a dependent class contains a pointer directly to a concrete class which provides the required behavior. The dependency cannot be substituted, or its 'signature' changed, without requiring a change to the dependent class."
The opposite of "tight coupling" is "loose coupling" which occurs "when the dependent class contains a pointer only to an interface, which can then be implemented by one or many concrete classes." Loosely coupled components have ways of working things out between themselves, but they are not directly dependent on each other.
One of the changes that Obamacare has made to 1/6th of the American economy is to take a relatively loosely coupled system and tightly couple it.
Uncertainty and struggle are what we most often associate with poverty. Not knowing if you can still afford to pay next month's bills and worrying over how much more you can cut back when you're already barely getting by. This way of life has become more associated with the middle class than with those at the very bottom.
The statistic that shows that average black household worth is at $4,955 while average white household worth is at $110,729 is often quoted, but these numbers are not comparing similar things. Comparing the naked numbers is as misleading as comparing the average salaries in Tokyo and Bombay. What matters is not how much money you have, but how you live.
The $110,729 and $4,955 don't reflect different standards of living; but different ways of living. Much of that $110,729 is home equity. But why do you need to shoulder the burden of a mortgage, when the government will just give you housing for free?
It's misleading to think of the $110,729 families as privileged and of the $4,955 families as oppressed.
The $110,729 and $4,955 families both have large flat screen televisions, smartphones and the usual baseline consumer toys. They could both eat equally well, except that the $4,955 family doesn't bother watching its food budget. It just takes whatever it wants off the shelf and worries about prices later.
In terms of personal satisfaction, the $4,955 family is happier than the $110,729 family. To understand this, think of the "Cloud". You can buy a laptop powerful enough to store all your programs and data. Or you can get by with a mobile device whose apps connect online to a "Cloud" of someone else's servers which store your data. The laptop is heavier to carry than the mobile device, but makes you more independent. Or you can just live in the "Cloud" confident that no matter how you mess up your device; your data will be backed up.
America is being divided between the workers and the dwellers in the government cloud. The $110,729 families are independent while the $4,955 families are living in the cloud. Their cloud is "Social Capital". Social Capital is their support system within their extended families and the government. Instead of using real capital, they use the collective Social Capital of family resources and government aid.
The $110,729 family pays for everything. The $4,955 family pays for very little. The $110,729 family earns and saves money because that is its medium of exchange which it uses to obtain food, shelter and clothing. The $4,955 family uses money for luxury goods like televisions or sneakers. It doesn't need to save money because cash is just bonus points. Its necessities like food, medicine and shelter are covered by the social capital of the government.
...The middle class has become the new poor. The old economic uncertainties of the households at the bottom of the ladder have fallen squarely on it-- with none of the sympathy, which is still reserved for their welfare wards.
The middle class is trapped by its own aspirations. Those aspirations are weighed down by a political system that exists for the benefit of the upper and lower classes. Though the middle class still has the majority of the vote, it has the least political influence because it has the least disposable time and wealth, and lacks a dedicated political class to represent its interests.
The United States is no longer a middle class country. It is a country whose political establishment answers to the operatives of the very rich and the very poor, the donor class and the welfare class. Politicians have a vested interest in catering to very rich donors or welfare voters because they have the time, money and organizations to get their way. And what they want is wealth redistribution upward and downward from the middle class. And not just the USA
#4
Clouds, in the end, are just vapour. And what happens when you are living 'in the cloud' and the cloud goes away?
Because eventually everyone except the elite will be 'living in the cloud' because that is all they have left. And who will be providing the cloud anymore? Not the elite. Not the middle class - there won't be a middle class. Eventually it will simply fade away like vapor tends to do.
#7
Look at India or Bangladesh and you will have the USA of tomorrow....Zero Middle Class, a microscopic elite/quasi royalty, and the vast mobs of the "unwashed" ( thats us )
#1
The military in general is another priority target of militants. Our willingness to sexualize and feminize, and indeed emasculate, the armed forces an institution whose existential qualities can only be described as masculine vividly illustrates how boundless is the determination to purge our civilization of what may be the central object of the radicals resentment: heterosexual masculinity.
Ah, the enlightened 21st century!
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/04/2013 11:27 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
