Wednesday August 20, 2003 at 2:02 PM
Systemic Failure
Appearing in American Culture
As fifty million people learned last week, waiting for something to break before fixing it is not exactly the path to reliability. Although it is likely to be soon forgotten, the critical lesson here is that while the market forces of capitalism are excellent at to optimizing short-term values such as efficiency and profit, they inevitably do so at the expense of long-term concerns such as reliability and sustainability.
Where the result this time around was basically a large-scale inconvenience however, such a benign outcome is unlikely to be the norm in future failures. Despite the danger however, our government increasingly turns to capitalism as a method for delivering the fundamental services which are it’s rightful duty and responsibility. Instead of tackling the difficult problem of creating an effective bureaucracy beholden to the common good, our leaders continue to outsource their obligations.
Although the capitalist approach holds an obvious appeal to both politicians afraid of accountability and a citizenry frustrated by governmental inadequacy, fundamental services such as public education, healthcare, transportation, social services, water, environmental protection, military support systems, and (apparently) electricity distribution, all require a focus on long-term planning and management that the capitalist drive for efficiency is inherently incapable of providing.
All this is not to say that capitalism is inherently bad or evil, clearly it’s resulted in a wealth of consumer goods and a standard of living unparalleled anywhere in history. It has done so however, at a tremendous cost to the environment, to our health, and to our society. A price which the leaders of government and business are all too willing to ignore or underestimate.
Most disturbing however is that by refusing to acknowledge and adequately counter capitalism’s inherent bias towards short-term gain, we are driving ourselves towards an increasingly unstable, unsustainable, and impoverished future.
Comments
Similar thoughts...
Free market capitalism is good for some things but not all. Has deregulation made air travel cheaper or safer? Has trucking deregulation made our highways safer or the rail industry healthier?
I was recently reminded of the technological downside free market capitalism in our telecom system. Paris has announced the pilot of a program the will provide high speed internet access (wi-fi) throughout the city. Never happen here.
Also, the europeans also have cooler cell phones because there aren't a plethora of competing standards. We probably pay less but most of us are relegated to old equipment (and don't even know it) for use in a uneven patchwork of coverage.
Posted by: Jim on Wed Aug 20, 03