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Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse?

Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse?

In modern times, as in ancient Rome, several nations have suffered a “systems collapse.” The term describes the sudden inability of once-prosperous populations to continue with what had ensured the good life as they knew it.

Abruptly, the population cannot buy, or even find, once plentiful necessities. They feel their streets are unsafe. Laws go unenforced or are enforced inequitably. Every day things stop working. The government turns from reliable to capricious if not hostile.

Consider contemporary Venezuela. By 2010, the once well-off oil-exporting country was mired in a self-created mess. Food became scarce, crime ubiquitous.

Radical socialism, nationalization, corruption, jailing opponents, and the destruction of constitutional norms were the culprits.

Between 2009 and 2016, a once relatively stable Greece nearly became a Third World country. So did Great Britain in its socialist days of the 1970s.

Joe Biden’s young presidency may already be leading the United States into a similar meltdown.

Hard Left “woke” ideology has all but obliterated the idea of a border. Millions of impoverished foreigners are entering the United States illegally—and during a pandemic without either COVID-19 tests or vaccinations.

The health bureaucracies have lost credibility as official communiques on masks, herd and acquired immunity, vaccinations, and comorbidities apparently change and adjust to perceived political realities.

After decades of improving race relations, America is regressing into a pre-modern tribal society.

Crime soars. Inflation roars. Meritocracy is libeled and so we are governed more by ideology and tribe.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Systems Fail

Why Systems Fail

Since failing systems are incapable of structural reform, collapse is the only way forward.

Systems fail for a wide range of reasons, but I’d like to focus on two that are easy to understand but hard to pin down.

1. Systems are accretions of structures and modifications laid down over time.Each layer adds complexity which is viewed at the time as a solution.

This benefits insiders, as their job security arises from the need to manage the added complexity. The new layer may also benefit an outside constituency that quickly becomes dependent on the new layer for income. (Think defense contractors, consultants, non-profits, etc.)

In short order, insiders and outsiders alike habituate to the higher complexity, and everyone takes it for granted that “this is how things work.” Few people can visualize alternatives, and any alternative that reduces the budget, payroll or power of the existing system is rejected as “unworkable.”

In this set of incentives, the “solution” is always: we need more money. If only we had another $1 million, $1 billion or $1 trillion, we could fix what’s broken.

But increasing the budget can’t fix what’s broken because it doesn’t address the underlying sources of systemic failure.

Those benefiting from the status quo will fight tooth and nail to retain their jobs and benefits, and so deep reform is essentially impossible, as the insiders and constituencies of each layer resist any reform that might diminish their security/income.

As a result, new layers rarely replaces previous layers; the system becomes more and more inefficient and costly as every new layer must find work-arounds and kludgy fixes to function with the legacy layers.

Eventually, the system becomes unaffordable and/or too ineffective to fulfill its mission.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Seneca Effect: a Book Review by Jantje Hannover

The Seneca Effect: a Book Review by Jantje Hannover

This is a review of the German edition of “The Seneca Effect” written by Jantie Hannover for the site of the radio station “Deutschelandfunk.” Very well done by someone who really read the book. Here I report a translation made mainly using “Google Translate,” and also some intervention on my part. Not a very good English, but at least understandable (U.B.)

Collapsing Systems

What empires and avalanches have in common

The Italian chemistry professor Ugo Bardi has written a book about the Seneca effect. He refers to the abrupt collapse of systems: observed in avalanches and balloons, but also in financial market bubbles and powerful empires.
By Jantje Hannover

When a balloon bursts or an avalanche takes place, it is a network structure that suddenly reorganizes. (image stock & people / Michael Nolan and Oekom Verlag)

Net, nodes, and collapses

“It would be a consolation to our weak souls and our works, if all things would slowly pass away as they arise, but as it happens, growth is slow, while the road to ruin is fast.”

This is what the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca said about 2,000 years ago. And as if Seneca had wanted to prove this sentence, in the course of his life he too had become more and more wealthy and influential, even rising up to become advisor to Emperor Nero. Until he fell out of favor and was eventually suspected of being part of a plot against the Emperor. Then, Nero ordered him to commit suicide.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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