<I call the phenomenon we experience when we get into the residue of a traffic jam after the cause of the traffic jam is gone "tractor beams" after the so-called beams in "Star Wars" which could grab onto a ship and pull it into something like the Death Star. Of course there is no such thing as tractor beams. But it's a very mysterious phenomenon - I am sure that a good scientist could explain it, but it really hasn't been explained yet.
People who live in rural areas don't ever experience the phenomenon because traffic isn't heavy enough. People in more highly populated areas probably don't experience the phenomenon because traffic is always heavy.
How does this apply to recessions? >
CB, it isn't tractor beams or other mystical stuff. Because I know everything, am a good scientist and have male answer syndrome, I can answer your question. But I hadn't thought of the recession connection. Thanks for making that link.
When fluids flow, they have a Reynolds Number which is a combination of viscosity, speed, density for each fluid and what it's doing. What happens is that when fluids flow slowly through a pipe or trough, they start off in laminar flow, like cars of a multilane freeway, with those near the wall travelling slowly due to surface friction but each molecule travelling in a straight line.
As the flow rate is increased there is a critical speed reached when suddenly the laminar flow breaks down into turbulent flow, where the molecules eddy around, not traveling in a straight line any more. Friction increases. Read all about it: eng.man.ac.uk
With cars on a freeway, it's a similar effect. Humans have slow reactions and cars don't accelerate instantly. Up to a certain loading, freeways flow freely and people tend to drive as close as they can to the car in front but not too close. As the freeway fills up, it becomes as tightly packed as it can be, flying along at 100 kph. It travels smoothly in 'laminar' flow. The faster the reaction times of drivers and the better the brakes, acceleration and weather conditions the more can be packed in.
If the freeway is packed for kilometres like that and it's humming nicely along, everything is good. Then, on the other side of the freeway, heading the other way, policeman pulls somebody over. Drivers in the laminar flow which is running right on its Reynolds Number, slow for a moment to take a peek as they go by. This causes a reduction in the capacity of the freeway at that point so the whole mass of vehicles all the way back upstream has to slow down. The brake lights propagate back upstream and it's only because some sensible drivers leave more room than most that they can slow gently avoiding a nose to tail [because drivers are usually travelling closer than their reaction time and braking capacity justify].
So now we have a slower flow of traffic. The policeman and the stopped car carry on their way. So now, there is no need to glance over. But cars continue to drive slowly up to that spot and when they realize the way is clear, which they don't realize until they get there they decide to accelerate after their half second reaction time [or one second for plenty of them or more].
The ghost [the tractor beam] from the other side of the freeway continues to operate until gaps in the traffic move the tail of the 'turbulent' flow up to the point of the delay at which time the freeway reverts to normal.
The connection I hadn't thought of in those terms is what happens when a humming economy, running fast in laminar flow but near its Reynolds number hits a bump in the road. Sure enough, it flicks over instantly to turbulent flow and runs at a crawl. People might as well get out and walk it goes so slowly and some of them do because they run out of fuel.
I would not want to stretch the analogy, but it's not too bad. There are countervailing forces which push the economy back towards fast laminar flow. Luxuries and wasteful actions are reduced and people concentrate on getting things going again instead of goofing off, gazing out the window etc. Uncle Al can tell people to push the accelerator further upstream knowing that they'll be in the clear by the time they've reacted and got the car accelerating. Unfortunately, a lot of problems occur during the turbulent times which makes it hard to get things back to normal.
It seems we have hit the Global economic Reynolds Number and internal friction has increased so much that we have spun into turbulent flow.
Since this is the first time in biological history that we have had 5 billion people in a globalized economy in an urban base rather than agricultural, with multitudes of new technologies and little evolutionary adaption for such a situation, we can expect some disturbance.
Since flow was actually turbulent before WTC, the effect might not be as dramatic as a freeway or fluid in a pipe reaching its Reynolds Number, but it is certainly a big eddy we are in. As I say, the analogy can't be stretched too far; humans are not molecules of fluid. But I don't like the idea of tractor beams getting a grip on us all.
Mqurice
PS: I am not writing this for you CB because I know you have a pet rat which won't urinate on burning people and the rat is not interested in my opinion [you do have weird pets]. So don't feel bad about me wasting all that time on something you didn't read. But others might be interested in the ideas. I like to think it through too and writing helps that process. |
