tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post5578741484031820764..comments2024-03-24T11:01:27.668-04:00Comments on Resource Insights: The overoptimized societyKurt Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05330759091950742285noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-50489509230302155662008-12-24T18:31:00.000-05:002008-12-24T18:31:00.000-05:00love your blog good stufflove your blog good stuffAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-56788397638531144042008-12-03T03:23:00.000-05:002008-12-03T03:23:00.000-05:00Addendum to my first point above: this is a clear ...Addendum to my first point above: this is a clear manifestation of the consequences of the current tendency to value a short term view more highly than a long term view. In the short term, unforeseen events are more unlikely than in a long term view.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14745720553667153509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-61699840779828348132008-12-03T03:21:00.000-05:002008-12-03T03:21:00.000-05:00Regarding, "Feast or famine, the system wasn't des...Regarding, "Feast or famine, the system wasn't designed for surges or sudden drops in demand"; actually only half true. The system was specifically designed not to accomodate surges or sudden drops, as both of these conditions require cushions, and cushions in a "just-in-time" paradigm are by definition inefficient. In other words, the risk of not having a cushion has been undervalued, while the costs of maintain said cushions have been overemphasized. <BR/><BR/>Regarding, "We were told that the global marketplace could heal itself and correct imbalances. Well, obviously it can't, not without mowing down an awful lot of people who did nothing to cause the current financial meltdown"; this is the essence of the neo-classical economic view - that markets under unsustainable conditions will self-correct. Yes they will, but at what consequence to the participants in the market? Demand destruction = destruction of economic activity, as we may well be witnessing now with the 9% year over year decline in oil consumption attributed to the $150 oil this summer.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14745720553667153509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-57425012312031212022008-12-01T17:34:00.000-05:002008-12-01T17:34:00.000-05:00Thanks to Anonymous for bringing us some truly exc...Thanks to Anonymous for bringing us some truly excellent intelligence from inside the logistics chain. And, thanks to Marty for showing how even one of the most resilient systems we have, the Internet, might have the resilience taken out of it. Frank, you are unfortunately correct that most people prefer a "familiar hell" to an "unfamiliar heaven." But kudos for trying to create the actual alternatives here on Earth now.Kurt Cobbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05330759091950742285noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-57713262617632772202008-12-01T16:51:00.000-05:002008-12-01T16:51:00.000-05:00Though not exactly a case of over-optimization (ar...Though not exactly a case of over-optimization (arguably using more energy), the recent push toward a 'google-ization' of the desktop along with applications, driven by lust for complete market domination (good summary <A HREF="http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1382&Itemid=97" REL="nofollow">here</A>) will result in a similarly brittle system. A local grid failure at a server farm (which can draw 100 megawatts these days!) would have the potential to take down everyone's and everyone's business desktop, apps, and content.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-43788947158799092352008-11-30T20:10:00.000-05:002008-11-30T20:10:00.000-05:00Sounds like Wendell Berry was right...Sounds like Wendell Berry was right...::athada::https://www.blogger.com/profile/09046982982270546995noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-52711305054708260012008-11-30T17:36:00.000-05:002008-11-30T17:36:00.000-05:00The global supply chain risk has additional issue...The global supply chain risk has additional issues: when it was still full there was no inventory in any of the US-side nodes. Tax law and profit hunger have created this monster. It's blind dogma that says you shouldn't have any inventory for anything anymore.<BR/><BR/>We actually saw how close to the edge supply chains are with Katrina when the chains were severed and suddenly there's no food or fuel. Even people in the oil business see the risk with energy.<BR/><BR/>Supply chains and JIT have been optimized in so well that any time in the last 5-10 years if you wanted something not on the standard menu, you'd suddenly see the real transit time for goods through the chain which ranged from 2-18 months for even minor things like odd-valued resistors or screws. <BR/><BR/>JIT meant that these had to recursively trigger every upstream supplier up to raw materials in order to custom manufacture a run because <B>no one</B> in the chain <I>isn't</I> doing JIT now. This is the problem with this kind of "innovation" - once everyone is doing it, the advantage disappears and everyone faces the downsides together, namely, that essentially we've become as inflexible as any Soviet planned economy.<BR/><BR/>Add to this the depth of the US-side of <I>any</I> supply chain of any business only averages 2-3 hops and its overseas. Far less is manufactured in the US than <I>most people who <B>know</B> we've outsourced everything</I> even believe which means if we don't make it here and global supply chains break we are simply SOL for that item and any downstream consumer of it.<BR/><BR/>My background is in reliability engineering and I can assure you that what we have is dangerously unreliable. The analogy I use is that we've decided that all the redundant hydraulics and electrical systems of our economic 747 have been judged wasteful so we tore them all out for the sake of profit ignoring the fact that eventually we'll have a situation that needs that redundancy just to stay aloft.<BR/><BR/>At the moment, I fear, we may have already run into that situation.<BR/><BR/>But more frightening yet are those people calling for "centralization" to fix food supply risk or security of global supply chains. This is as wrong an idea as putting out a fire with gasoline. Making things more centralized will only create worse single-point failures and reduce overall efficiency in terms of cost and availability at the same time. <BR/><BR/>Only adding redundant, independent and competing economic players can improve the risks, just like adding redundant, independent hydraulics in a jet improves reliability and security to its operation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-17635249139816382632008-11-30T15:30:00.000-05:002008-11-30T15:30:00.000-05:00Thanks Kurt for your insights!It seems clear to me...Thanks Kurt for your insights!<BR/><BR/>It seems clear to me the current system is broken beyond repair. This is self evident in the bailout methodologies. Consolidation wrought increasing fragility, and the nature of the market seems to select for undesirable human characteristics like greed, lying, cheating, ... However, when watching a YouTube of some mainstream media talking heads discussing the financial crisis, there was a discernable low level hysteria manifest by all the speakers. By and large, Americans seem comfortable with their lives and loathe significant change. After all, "a familiar hell is better than an unfamiliar heaven". So how do we redesign for resilience? According to the Native world view, we first must visualize the change we wish to see. When we change ourselves, we change the world, according to Ghandi. We seek to model some of these methodologies at our project <A HREF="http://entropypawsed.org" REL="nofollow">EntropyPawsed</A>.Frank Giffordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08732100848570571207noreply@blogger.com