Efficiency is the removal of redundancy.

During the COVID lockdowns, and to a lesser degree when the Evergiven got stuck, we saw to how much the Just In Time invisible chains of production and distribution around us affect our lives. As climate change significantly disrupt farming throughout the world, we'll continue to see similar effects.

I'm all for global chains of distribution: specialization is real and you won't ever grow bananas in Alaska (even if Iceland showed it is technically possible last century), manufacture a computer chip in Paris or produce wine in Greenland, but we as consumers have to accept and understand that having pineapple out of season anywhere in the planet is not reasonable at the prices we're used to paying. In some French super markets I've seen signs on the produce next to the price with the country of origin and helpful information of when the growing season is. I found that as an excellent nudge for the almost entirely fictional homo economicus. I'd like us to surface that information to everyone for everything. Maybe that way people would understand just how connected we are.

But that interconnectedness and search for "efficiency" is not only in financial or production systems, it exists in software, hardware, any kind of industry, and in governments. When we "engineer out" expertise out of government to the private sector, government then lacks that expertise entirely. When we engineer away redundancy from software, we end up with software that can fail in catastrophic ways.

One thing I keep seeing is the same lessons being learned across different disciplines: pilots and doctors learning about the importance of checklists, road and industrial machine engineers learning about safe by default design, industrial and software UX designers learning about how to best make machines and humans talk to each other. We need more cross pollination. Across industries. Across borders. Across people. That's how we build a better future. And for that we need to listen.

@swallez so many small things that add no cost but have a material impact. I always think of the legislation forcing plastic bottle caps to remain attached by default. Such a small thing, such a large impact on both loose trash and recyclability. There are so many small changes we can do that no one would bat an eye at that would improve all our lives. So many others that people would have kneejerk reactions towards that would be beneficial to all.

@ekuber i was just bringing this up in the context of all but essential-for-rail-service personnel on train stations. It’s around-water-freezing cold here and there is lots of snow and ice. It’d take a station keeper an hour tops to clean things and make usage safe, but no, we optimised that position away and now we play slip-and-slide with serious injuries for the third week running. Great system.

@ekuber Preach!

By and large, the motivation for efficiency to maximize the amount that can be extracted from that step of the process; the brittleness and fragility of the machine upon which everyone's lives depend has been put in so people get rich as much as possible. (It's not even "get rich", it's "as much as possible" or maybe "as soon as possible" if you can tell those apart.)

If we want to live through the time of angry weather, we're going to agree that nobody is or gets rich.

@ekuber This is a wonderfully concise phrasing of something I regularly wave my arms and froth about when talking to people about this stuff. Thank you!

@swallez @ekuber I have helped fund a local organic farm, actually, so I can get the full range of seasonal produce from my own farm. Bit extreme, I know. But participating in this project has learned me a lot about all the things that go into running a farm. Lots of respect for farmers.