tyranny of the quantitative

[sophiaserpentia]

Boston's Big Dig. The NYC steam pipes. And now a freaking highway bridge in Minneapolis.

Forget terrorists. I'm afraid of our crumbling infrastructure. Each of us is far more likely to be killed by collapsing bridges, falling ceiling panels, or exploding steam pipes than any terrorist.

Let's go further back and include the Katrina response in this, because it, too, reflects a similar lack of focus.

And, let's expand outwards and include ethylene glycol in toothpaste and melamine in pet food. Because all of these things are connected by a central theme... which is, ironically, the lack of anything resembling a common focus or vision.

We don't have any kind of meaningful common focus in our decision-making as a society. So many of the quandaries we're in -- from global warming to the oceans dying to resource depletion -- happen because millions of developers, politicians, investors, and laborers are each doing our own thing, with little or no regard to anything resembling a big picture.

We're winging it, and we can't do that anymore. Luck runs out.

Part of this problem has been described in economic discourse as the Tragedy of the Commons. But beyond the obvious difficulties of overuse and depletion, these problems are a tangible result of the dearth of meaningful discourse regarding economic problems and solutions.

Politics has become an advertising-driven enterprise. Campaign consultants talk about their candidate's image as a "branding" concern, and they judge the success of their efforts by what kind of emotions people have when they think of their client. They focus-group test sound-bites and slogans and key phrases which are designed to worm their way into your brain and install an emotional pushbutton so you respond the proper way when they press it. Meaning is driven from the process because meaning is unpredictable. If any candidate comes along who says something really meaningful, it could throw the whole scheme off, and everyone's jobs in the campaign-industrial complex would be threatened. The consultants, whose job it is to win elections, not solve society's problems, distrust meaning. And the media, of course, plays right along, encouraging this trend and helpfully marginalizing any candidate who threatens to bring in too much meaningful discussion. Because for them, too, meaning is dangerous.

This sounds like an abstract problem, but it isn't because people are dying as a result of this, and those of us who haven't been killed by it are seeing our quality of life be affected.

"Boring" things like routine maintenance and food inspections and disaster preparation -- you know, the stuff that should be a no-brainer -- gets de-funded and de-prioritized because it's easier to get a photo op standing in front of something new, bigger, shinier. The result is mile after mile after mile of empty shopping centers, brownfields, urban blight, crappy schools, decaying neighborhoods.

This isn't a call for a political solution, BTW. This problem can develop in a Communist nation (cf. Chernobyl) just as easily as it can happen in a capitalist nation. The real issue is lack of involvement. Lack of discourse. Lack of contemplation and consideration.

Comments

[pixelmonster.livejournal.com]

Bravo! Excellent post and great wisdom shown here.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Many years ago I had a frightening idea after a small building in the FQ collapsed randomly from age...

What happens when the skyscrapers we have built start crumbling? How long will they last? How much warning will people have?

[kumbunny.livejournal.com]

Branding is the price we pay for the media we use now. It's sad but truw. Not only is it sad, but it works miserably well.

With the recent youtube spectacle in the US about the candidates. What exactly was clarified by this media flirtation?

"Should Hillary show more cleavage and is Obama, too good, a snappy dresser?" (newspeak intended)

Personally, I think it could only get solved if people had to go thru a pre-requisite of community activism, before they could run.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

See post I made last week containing an essay writtren by a local NOLA engineer.
http://alobar.livejournal.com/2421648.html

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

This isn't a call for a political solution, BTW. This problem can develop in a Communist nation (cf. Chernobyl) just as easily as it can happen in a capitalist nation. The real issue is lack of involvement. Lack of discourse. Lack of contemplation and consideration.

True enough. Fixing these problems demands that economic priorities favor the needs of the citizens over the needs of the rulers. Communism means never having to say you're sorry, but so does unfettered capitalism, and so at least part of the solution is political and economic.

A lot of infrastructure-related problems in the big cities are caused by the massive collapse of tax revenues due to the "White flight" phenomenon that began in the '60s and continues today. Which certainly ties into your observations, since the belief that one can take one's kids and "escape" to an all-white secure economic and social paradise while letting the economic hubs of commerce and industry collapse is short-sighted selfishness at best, and irrational psychosis at worst.

The "conservatives" in government and media have established the catchphrase "you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it" so deeply into the average Americans' psyches that they actually believe it. On the contrary, when it comes to fixing bridges, repairing sewers, making buildings more earthquake resistant, reinforcing levees, hiring qualified teachers, etc., the correct solution is to throw money at it! Granted, you need qualified contractors, transparency, and so on, but those too cost money. And there's certainly no lack of $$$ for war-waging, corporate bailouts, etc., so the "we can't afford it" argument is bogus on its face.

Perhaps we should abandon the entire idea of the nation-state, and go to eking out survival via subsistence farming and a barter economy between tiny isolated anarchist communes (which is the logical outcome of the entire Earth First!/Small is Beautiful/Inconvenient Truth movement). But I'm not so sure. To advocate that is to admit that the problems that exist are beyond repair and totally unworkable or unrepairable, and I suspect that's exactly the despairing view that certain classes of oligarchs would like the rest of us to accept as gospel. Consider that the Ford and Carnegie Foundations created and financed the nascent "ecology movement" in the first place, and one has to ask "cui bono?" What I do know is that either way, it's gonna take some sort of Stupidity Vaccine (RAW's term) to get us out of the messes we've made for ourselves (or that we've allowed to be made for us while we were watching Paris Hilton, etc.).

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Oh, great, now "crumbling infrastructure" is an exciting photo op.

It's how long until the election? 14 months? Expect at maximum precisely 14 months of talk about fixing bridges and pipes and tunnels and highway.

[beowulf1723.livejournal.com]

This disaster in Minnesota reminds me of the collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967 which was the "climax" of John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies. It that case you had an old bridge that had been poorly maintained carrying a lot more traffic than it was designed for. This one was a lot newer, but I'll bet that it failed for the same reasons -- poor maintenance and too great a load for its design.

Ironically, the I-35 bridge in Minnesota was built the same year that the Silver Bridge failed.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

I just said something in somebody else's journal about how, as a society, we don't reward people who contribute to that infrastructure. Teachers are the most egregious example, but I was talking about my dad, who's been in health care for more than 30 years, primarily focused on low-income and nonwhite populations. He's currently the director of a network of low-income health clinics in Marin County, serving largely the Latino and/or migrant population, a job that's perpetually underfunded and underpaid, as well as murderously stressful. If he were mercenary enough to just go to Kaiser or Blue Cross or some private hospital, he could double or triple his salary, but he's motivated by a genuine sense of conscience and social responsibility, and it's killing him.

There's no percentage in public service.

I read a great article recently...

[merlot-winters.livejournal.com]

in Harper's. It was about Detroit and how it has hollowed out to the point that they now have vast tracts of greenspace in the central city core and that the city government is promoting the idea allowing neighbors to buy the land for very cheap and farm it. Here's the cite to the article in Harper's
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/0081594

It seems that if petroleum became too expensive then people would start moving back into central cities and keeping them up better. The cynic in me believes, however, that they'll keep improving fuel economy in automobiles just enough to keep everyone in them. It seems that our current system of planning simply encourages the abandonment of older settlements in favor of newer settlements rather that maintain the older ones, all enabled by the automobile.

[moomlyn.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you can see it too.