The more I look at the complexity of the modern world, the more amazing I find that things hold together as much as they do. To me, it is not so surprising that the world economy could take a "sudden turn", and through a series of foolish choices, and lack of oversight take a serious fall into the shitter, but that it does not occur more often, and with greater consequence.

My vision of a post-apocalyptic world is not so much a nuclear holocaust, or devestation wreaked by pollution, or even the inevitable results of Malthusian economics, but the simplicity of a fuck up made somewhere by people who don't understand the underlying systems managing our synthetic universe.

Do we have any less resources today than yesterday? Nope. Did we after the savings and loan scandal? In the thirties? Not so much. But once the means of administration fell apart, it became virtually impossible to get anything done. And now we may be taking a sudden slide into socialism (hopefully a truer socialism than the bullshit oligarchies under the communists, or the horrible facism of national socialism, although it would be entirely too easy for this country to backslide into those positions).

So rarely does anyone understand the world around them. Everyone specializes, and relies on everything else to be brought to them. I can fix a car, but could you build one? Does anyone out there now how to make cloth? How the hell does my tv or radio actually work? I could grow enough food for a few meals, but for an entire year? I'd be lost. What is it? Less than two weeks worth of food to be had supporting each city? What if something happens to the transportation system? I remember Hurricane Rita hitting after Katrina, and there wasn't any gas to be had where I was in Texas for almost two weeks due to hoarding, despite relatively little damage being done.

If the economy can go just like that, how simple for something else to fail? And if that's the case, how many dominoes will it take to bring the whole thing down? Most of us can't run our own lives, how can we pretend we control our world?

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"

-Yeats-

Staring abysmally, (damn it! I think it's staring back at me...)

nbs