{"id":9388,"date":"2015-06-24T07:25:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T12:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9388"},"modified":"2015-06-24T07:25:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T12:25:00","slug":"collapse-part-3-no-institutional-path-to-contraction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9388","title":{"rendered":"Collapse Part 3: No Institutional Path to Contraction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Collapse Part 3: No Institutional Path to Contraction<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/a>
\nCollapse is not an event, it is a process.<\/i><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

One poorly understood source of collapse is the lack of pathways to contraction and a reduction of complexity\/cost.<\/b>\u00a0The only pathway that is clearly marked is the one to expansion–of production, debt, credit, government, income, benefits, costs and complexity: more agencies, more regulations, more committees, more staff, more of everything.<\/p>\n

The path to less complexity, less debt, less production and a contraction of the entire system doesn’t exist in most institutions.<\/p>\n

Many dismiss any talk of collapse as mere fear-mongering.<\/b>\u00a0This is a legitimate issue to discuss, for if we focus exclusively on the lurid horrors of being killed by a shark in open water (for example) while ignoring the much higher risks of being killed by falling off a ladder at home, we have distorted the risks of accidental death and done a disservice to our understanding of various risks.<\/p>\n

But collapse is not an event, it is a process.<\/b>\u00a0As a result, systemic collapse doesn’t lend itself to statistical calculations of probability. Processes are driven by dynamics, not odds.<\/p>\n

So those dismissing any discussion of collapse as\u00a0mere fear-mongering<\/i>\u00a0are doing a disservice to our understanding of processes–or lack thereof.<\/b>\u00a0One interesting feature of collapse is that it can result from either a choking over-abundance of complex, costly processes or a complete lack of\u00a0essential processes, conceptually and practically.<\/i><\/p>\n

Which brings us to the process that is lacking virtually everywhere–the process of contraction:<\/b>\u00a0shrinking the system, income, headcount, complexity and being productive with less of everything.<\/p>\n

The corporate world offers many examples of what happens when the process of contraction and reducing complexity does not exist: companies buckle, fold and go bust.<\/b>\u00a0The world’s corporate darling Apple experienced this precise death-spiral in 1996-1997 before the company’s board brought Steve Jobs back as CEO. (So tentative was the board that Jobs was appointed “interim CEO.”)<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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Collapse Part 3: No Institutional Path to Contraction\u00a0 Collapse is not an event, it is a process. One poorly understood source of collapse is the lack of pathways to contraction and a reduction of complexity\/cost.\u00a0The only pathway that is clearly marked is the one to expansion–of production, debt, credit, government, income, benefits, costs and complexity: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[127,150,6662,2734,4924,690,6663,3721],"class_list":["post-9388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-collapse","tag-contraction","tag-fear-mongering","tag-oftwominds","tag-risk","tag-systemic-process","tag-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9389,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9388\/revisions\/9389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}