Finally Ron, a courteous, respectful and non-hostile post from you! I will thus respond.
You have stated my position, actually my analysis (as position connotates a fixed place) well, altho incompletely. What you left out are the vital factors that most differentiate our entire philosophies and preps, e.g.,
1. you do NOT take into account the circle of dominoes, and the potentiality of catestophic effects NOT just from initial breakdowns in any field, but the potential cascading effects, UP, DOWN AND CROSS-STREAM OF ANY POSSIBLE CHAIN IN ANY FIELD WHERE PRODUCTS MUST FLOW!
Unlike me, you have NOT analyzed one of the MOST vital of all concepts, that is the NUMBER of layers or links on EVERY SINGLE CHAIN from source to market/consumer. In the oil industry, e.g., there are approximately 9-10 from wellhead to utility company/gas pump.
A complete understanding of the potential catastrophe that awaits us would require analyzing each link in each vital chain, again, e.g, the oil chain, to best contemplate which/how many layers/links are potentially suspectible to break-downs.
In the above, I see ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE OR DATA so suggest even one such link will be compliant, not one! Cheeky has posted pr spin crap articles giving great hope for several of those layers, I believe refining, and pumping- those contradict reports I have seen from insiders and top industry mags.
If no imported oil for x months, the grid goes down, and may stay down, metaphorically speaking.
But, I have analyzed these chains in other vital sectors also. In almost every field/industry, espically the crucial farm-fork food chain, there are in almost all such cases, at least 7-8, or 9-10 in the above case.
Thus,check the links in the chain against the latest and best articles regarding budgets spent, complexity, sophistication level of engineers working on each, y2k compliance/ready/testing reports/status, but check them for the most vital industries, and you would probably end up farther along on the doomer side than the polly side.
this is a brief rudamenary overview.
2. division of labor- those without a comprehensive background in business are usually grossly unaware of how fragile the international division of labor has now become and how it is so integrated into y2k phonemena- they are as interdependent as is possible to be. Engineers can not fully grasp the significance anywhere near as completely as can those with a major business background, so on that point, the twain can never meet.
4. one of my major disagreements with you has always been involving logicistics. you make so many ridiculous statements about the way things should be or how simple they can become, but logistically speaking, no damn way!
You could give me some happy face ending example, and I can easily shoot it down using logistical analysis...this is another area so many engineers and those not highly trained in APPLIED (not engineering) logic just don't get and stay clueless.
I have done this before with some of your "Its a wonderful life" endings, and you just never get it!
You give me any such example again, one such disruption that will have a rosy ending for betty and bob, in a case where there are a hugh number of simultaneous disruptions occurring, and I will shoot it so full of holes you would become upset at the potential hopelessness of the sitution, if you grasped the multi-dimensionalness of the casual chain, or would just typically revert to calling me a doomer or worse.
its late and i am quite sleepy so i am ending off mid-stream. |
