back to article SHIP OF FAIL: How do we right capsized institutions we thought would NEVER go under?

John Watkinson writes the first in a series of essays for El Reg in which he examines failures in society from banking and education to transport and IT. But why whine about this stuff so much, he ponders, when we can simply get on with the business of problem solving? The last seven or so years since the economic crash has …

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  1. William Donelson

    VOTE! Polls don't matter.

    * Only VOTES matter.

    * The BEST way to Multiply your voting power:

    ** Set up a Carpool Society with many cars to take voters to the polls.

    * Only YOU can save democracy.

    Remember the Conservatice Dream:

    A sweatshop country where compliant workers live in ignorance, fear, illness and poverty, while the 2% bleed us, laugh and invest overseas.

    1. Anomalous Cowturd
      Thumb Up

      @Bill re: VOTE!

      The BIG problem is not the voters, it's the choices.

      Would you like to bend over? Me on top? Or would you prefer nice comfy spoons?

      Any way, YOU'RE FUCKED!

      Hmmm......

      P.S. Sorry for shouting. :o)

      And NO, I don't mean vote UKIP. Splitters!

      1. codejunky Silver badge

        Re: @Bill re: VOTE!

        @ Anomalous Cowturd

        "The BIG problem is not the voters, it's the choices."

        Somewhat but lets think it through. Every time we get a leader who wants to lead we dont want them. We want them to bend to our will all the time and through voting we get to choose until they are as malleable as we dont want. Blair got power through the gift of lying with a smile, which just so happens to be what we have as the main 3 parties now. We did have a decision maker who was strong and made tough choices but she is practically regarded as the devil in this country so nobody wants to be like Thatcher. However her kind of leadership at the top of each party but with their own views of how to proceed is what we need to make the tough choices instead of lies on one hand and a slap with the other.

        For 13 years people voted for a hateful little man who conned the country and has now won awards regardless of the wars and death he caused through his lies. A man who introduced uni fees and did much harm to the country was voted and loved.

        So do our politicians want to accept they will upset some but do what they believe is right for the country, or do they lie, cheat and steal but you will support them? The choice is obvious and they dont pretend to be saints.

        So now the public mood slowly shifts from boy band looks where everyone is plastic (Blair, Cameron, Clegg, Millitwit) to toying with the idea of the oddball. So we have Farrage vs Boris but Boris has the benefit of already being part of a 'standard' party that people already know and hate so will happily vote for. How UKIP have done so well I have no idea but they offer enough of a threat that the main parties bend to whatever policy UKIP shout about. We have the politics we want. The one we voted for and the one we fear to change.

        We have people who vote for their 'team' red. blue or yellow. We have extremists who vote BNP, green, etc. We have rogues who vote smaller parties because they will never get in. We have the uncaring who spoil their ballot but then complain anyway because a celebrity did it (ha). And then we have people who accept the perfect party cannot exist because it is different for everyone and instead vote for what they feel is right for the country regardless of everyone elses belief.

        If we want someone worth voting for maybe we need voters worth the effort.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Megaphone

          Re: @Bill re: VOTE!

          You say Maggie was a leader. The issue is that she deliberately employed yes men who would not disagree, so you end up with not a leader, but a dictator by proxy.

          If she had some people brave enough to say, "actually, that is a STUPID idea "(an issue still around today), then much of the shit that goes on wouldn't happen.

          You want change?

          BAN parties. Give the elected a free vote in ALL matters, instead of this utterly pointless towing the line.

          If where I live the majority want to allow fox hunting say, then my MP should say so and vote so, not just toe the party line. My voice should NOT be overruled by the 11% of MP's that form the London mob, after all I doubt any of them have even heard of where I live, let alone know what affect me.

          1. codejunky Silver badge

            Re: @Bill re: VOTE!

            @ Lost all faith...

            You say she employed yes men but if you have a vision of how to proceed do you want to hire back stabbers and heel dragger's or do you hire people who will get on with it? She had plenty people disagreeing with her very publicly. Now imagine a lib dem with that kind of will. Imagine a tory or labour. At that point there will be a national choice instead of 3 plastic conmen. Imagine making a choice and the chosen leader actually making changes.

            Instead we have labour promising the earth and instead feeding you dirt. We have tories who dont want to look like the nasty party so look similar to the last labour party. We have libs fighting for their beliefs one second and then gagging to sell out the next.

            Some people want larger state and some want smaller. However we have 3 parties of 'yey EU' and more legislation. If we vote for plastic muppets who promise lies and seek to control/steal then guess what we get. Regardless of their success it is somewhat good when a party shakes things up a bit (usually a smaller party like BNP, Green, UKIP) because without them we get the same 3 flavours of dumb look.

            I would prefer a rolling back of the state and allowing local matters to be more local. For example of fox hunting it would be a rural decision instead of half knowledge from the big city. But the only way to really get it is to vote in stronger leaders who actually will do something like reducing the central control instead of a half baked idea like a mayor.

    2. James Micallef Silver badge

      Voting is just a first step, but there are many other related problems, politically:

      - parties are basically the same with a different veneer on top. Ideology blah-blah is radically different, actual policies quite close to each other, real implementation of policies almost indistinguishable

      - So much of the country is now run by quangos and civil service departments that politicians come and go but the people actually taking and implementing decisions mostly stay the same.

      By the way this isn't just UK but pretty much everywhere

      Stepping back from political and looking at the bigger picture, a lot of this stems from basic human cognitive disabilities that have been repeatedly demonstrated:

      - cognitive bias, accepting what we already 'know' and rejecting evidence for opposing views

      - horribly skewed 'intuitive' risk assessment

      - horribly wrong 'intuitive' feeling for numbers, especially very large ones

      - terrible short-term-ism

      - etc etc

      Unfortunately, significantly changing anything in our social / economic / political systems requires a constant struggle against not only the status quo but against millions of years of evolution that have left humans as a species woefully incapable of properly adapting to modern life.

      Bugger!

    3. ciaran
      WTF?

      Politicians are corrupt - by definition

      We live in a capitalist society. Our society believes that each individual benefiting themselves will benefit society. And then we vote for a politician and expect them to work selflessly for the good of the whole without benefiting themselves? Really?

    4. Caaaptaaaain kick arse

      Doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

  2. Drew V.
    Flame

    You've got it exactly backwards.

    The problem is precisely that in our political culture, real politics has been gradually replaced with what Evgeny Morozov calls "solutionism". When you talk about "fundamental solutions", you should really be talking about political solutions, NOT science or technology. But the former are no longer possible because (we are repeatedly told) this is a "post-political" age in which we must rely on the "experts" (such as IT experts and so on) to solve all the problems for us, preferably with convenient technical solutions that instantly work in the short term. What is no longer acceptable, however, is questioning the political framework and the political choices within which those technical solutions must be found and applied...even though the real solution might be to make different political choices.

    Energy is the perfect example. It's obvious that fossil fuel dependency, global warming, and related problems can never be solved with technical means alone. The free market is never going to come up with enough "green" products and technologies to solve it. A real solution would be to start with making different political choices: the state taking charge, radically changing the paradigms under which the energy industry operates, and actively mandating how we live our lives. But for that, there is no political will, and nobody is allowed to question the political framework or the ruling ideologies (meaning, neoliberalism). The politicians have no stomach for such a thing, the wealthy and the corporations reject it because it would obstruct their flow of profit, and the public has been indoctrinated by the idea of TINA (There Is No Alternative).

    And the utopian technologists make this even worse, by peddling the lie "don't worry, we can solve all these problems for you. You don't have to throw out your politicos and you don't have change how you live your lifes. Just give us free rein, don't question what we're doing, and everything will magically be fine."

    1. SoaG

      Re: You've got it exactly backwards.

      "A real solution would be to start with making different political choices: the state taking charge...and actively mandating how we live our lives."

      What could possible go wrong?

      When in all of human history has that approach had a result other than going disastrously wrong on an epic scale?

      Nothing is more adverse to change, more inclined to treat symptoms not problems, to cover up problems and mistakes, and to punish whistle blowers, than government. The most sure fire way to prevent resolution of any problem is to give responsibility for dealing with it to people whose pay depends on the problem continuing to exist, and whose position & advancement on it continuing to get worse.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: You've got it exactly backwards.

        "Nothing is more adverse to change, more inclined to treat symptoms not problems, to cover up problems and mistakes, and to punish whistle blowers, than government. "

        Yes there is: corporations.

        I'll take the government over corporations any damn day. It's the lesser of the 2 evils.

        1. ElectricRook

          Re: You've got it exactly backwards.

          Oh no . . . no no no. Government is ten times worse than corporations. For one the government has the guns and plenty of men all too eager to use them. For instance in the US the department of education has a SWAT team! Plus the government licenses the press and often threatens them with the tax man who in case you did not notice has guns and their own SWAT team too. Governments cannot reorganize on the fly like corporations do. Governments blunder on into the fog. For instance, a government facility where I worked used paper tape and Hollerith cards as late as 1992! And yes that agency had guns and a SWAT team too!

      2. Drew V.

        Re: You've got it exactly backwards.

        I think you've misunderstood me somewhat: I was rattling off examples, not saying that the political solution necessarily HAS to come from the state. In the specific case of energy, where economies of scale and centralized control over a national grid are pretty much unavoidable, the state is the obvious political level at which fundamental changes can be implemented.

        But it doesn't necessarily have to be the state. In fact, when the author writes:

        "Actions that can be taken at all levels, from the individual upwards, that may improve our standard of living and reduce our anxieties and fears whilst not requiring our only planet to be pillaged as if there was another one round the corner."

        ...it seems to me that (perhaps without realizing it or intending to) he's really referring to localized political solutions. That is to say, individuals and communities organizing themselves and creating a political solution at a local level. It should have been clear from my argument as a whole that my definition of "politics" is a very broad one, not limited to either parliament or the state.

        1. TheOtherHobbes

          Re: You've got it exactly backwards.

          Central government has been biased against local solutions since Thatcher's day. The Queen of Sleaze wasn't just a nasty piece of work, her policies were deliberately designed to consolidate power in the hands of her handlers.

          So good luck with getting anything more useful than a bit of gardening and maybe some road signs put up locally. If you try to do anything more interesting, you'll find you're 'not allowed' to.

          The real problem is democracy is rigged and basically non-existent in the UK. The voting thing is a bit of panto we all get to take part in. It has almost no effect on policy.

          There are no easy answers, and Watkinson's vapid conclusion certainly isn't one of them. But if I had too much spare cash I'd start a party that encouraged people to pick people from the local community who are respected, effective and have a record of integrity to stand for parliament. *Not* business people and the usual suspects, but people like teachers, nurses, and even (!) software developers.

          Then run a slow flush through Westminster replacing the current crop of chancers, thieves, and shills in all parties with adults who have a track record of solving problems.

          It's not a perfect solution, but it's (arguably) better than any of the alternatives.

        2. Tom 13

          Re: You've got it exactly backwards.

          No, I understood you perfectly. You're one of the ones who is part of the precipitate.

    2. Tom 13

      Re: You've got it exactly backwards.

      You were doing okay with the first paragraph then went completely off the rails on the second.

      A fair number of problems are because we get a choice between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dummer. Then you want to hand dictatorial powers to Tweedle Dummer.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Since the loss of manufacturing jobs, manual labour jobs, engineering jobs, indeed most jobs that required people to mine, make, build and repair things, all we have left is the service industry. Now it seems that if you can't do much there, you become a manager, you go into marketing, consultancy, PR, and you immediately find the very small section of people who really are productive, and really know useful things, threatening.

    So managers and other service non-jobs end up in power, yet have little or nothing to do with workers and producers, and end up living in this purely abstract, value-limited world. When messy real life intrudes, no-one's able to cope. Calamity ensues, again and again.

    Until we learn to properly value the producers and doers in this world - say farmers, teachers, engineers, train drivers, doctors, nurses, scientists, builders, plumbers and so on - we're stuck.

    1. Drew V.

      Yeah, but then the question becomes: WHY do we not "properly value the producers and doers"? And the answer is that this is a deliberate political choice we have been consistently making (and, for most people, making it without fully realizing that they are making it) since Thatcher.

      1. peter_dtm
        Flame

        since Thatcher ?

        since long before Thatcher - probably since the end of the 1st World War.

        WIlson & co had no truck with engineers or scientists either - unless they were party credentialed (lysenkoism)

        What is it with people who blame Thatcher for everything - ? She's been gone these many years; we've had Blair and Brown who definatlely hated engineering & science; & Cameron who wouldn't understantand what a thesis was if you made him learn the definition by rote; using single sylable words ! News for you - NONE of the governments following Thatcher have attempted to reverse any of her most conservative/capitalist/sane anti-big government policies; so if you don't like Thatcherism you must hate all the modern political parties.

        Perhaps the only hope we had was a secretary of education who was prepared to fight the establishment so ALL kids had a chance at learning to try to excell instead of being told how useless they are (indirectly of course; what else is the refusal to allow competition but a subtle way of saying you aren't goog enough ?)

        Why do we not value producers & doers - because kids are taught NOT to that's why - science/maths/engineering ts too 'difficult ' so do a gcse in hair straightening or grass growing. Gove had the guts to challange that and finally halt the academic dumbing down.

        Why has this come about ? Many reasons no doubt; part of it is that science & technical studies demand ABSOLUTE answers that are mostly either right or wrong - unlike all the soft skills where there are as many right answers as there are politically correct views. And the current powers that be do not believe in ABSOLUTES; evrything is realtive (to their political leanings); to have to face the posibility of being wrong is just too damned soul destroying for the poor things.

        1. Drew V.

          "so if you don't like Thatcherism you must hate all the modern political parties."

          The way they all operate now? Yes, of course I do, and I am hardly alone in that, judging by the number of people who don't vote.

          Those are the parties of a highly dysfunctional, corrupted and anachronistic system, and they are all part of the problem to a greater or less degree.

          Otherwise I agree with you, though, in the sense that there are other additional reasons for why things are the way they are. And it didn't literally begin with Thatcher, no, but she sure did more than anyone else to make the problem worse.

      2. Tom 13

        Re: since Thatcher.

        Again your failure shows. You've been actively making these choice since long before Thatcher. Thatcher stood against them. They started at least as far back as Churchill's successor, and possibly before Churchill. You progs all want to claim you're opposed to fascism and the nazis, the truth is until Hitler invaded France your predecessors marched pretty much in step with his National Socialism. It was only AFTER he had killed millions of Jews that you felt free to hate him and vilify your political opponents, regardless of their actual position on the political spectrum, as being just like him. Until you remove the beam from your own eye, you'll never be able to see clearly.

    2. el_oscuro

      In other words, we are all on the "B" ark.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”' -- "Time Enough For Love", Robert A. Heinlein

  4. Mike Flugennock
    Pirate

    Perhaps a better question to ask would be...

    Should we bother to right any of these capsized institutions?

    1. ElectricRook

      Re: Perhaps a better question to ask would be...

      Should we bother to right any of these capsized institutions?

      Precisely, we should not attempt to right them. Nature abhors vacuum. Something will rise up to fill the place of the failed companies. That something will be the best parts of the failed conglomerates. Let evolution rule, survival of the fittest!

      1. John G Imrie

        Re: Perhaps a better question to ask would be...

        That was working really well, until the politicians decided that the banks where too big to fail. We should have done what Island did and let the lot go into Bankruptcy.

    2. Tom 13

      Re: Perhaps a better question to ask would be...

      Given that nobody is building new boats you might be able to move to? Probably.

      Given the adverse effect their current state is having on all of us? Definitely.

      Whether they should continue as large as they were? Probably not.

      Whether they should continue to be run by the same idiots that ran them before? Definitely not.

      Which means the 'How?' is still the critical part, even if you do want to chuck some or most of the parts that capsized. Not that I have any belief the author of the article will be able to shed light on the question. Some of his examples and starting points illuminate the fact that he is as clueless as the people he berates on how to properly fix what is wrong.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Actually when it comes to solving problems with our society & by extension our policitcal institutions, what we need to do is to start with education, and the one theme that should be taught from the very beginning is; Enlightened Self-Interest

    If we could get a society where this was the primary personality trait a lot of our problems would start to solve themselves as the idea of personal profit to the exclusion of all else wouldnt be the overriding drive which it currently appears to be

    1. James Micallef Silver badge

      "what we need to do is to start with education"

      Yes, that is true. Unfortunately the education departments, teachers' unions etc are, in the majority, conservatively clinging on to early-20-th-century educational methods, teach the status quo because that is all they know, and have structures as rigid as a rusted robot with a poker up it's bottom.

      There are many great educators in the world. Most of them are outside of established school systems and need to be actively searched for. Many of the great educators stuck in the existing school systems are 'misfits' who are hated/feared by their colleagues because they are different / try to change things

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Industrial Education

        The fundamental flaw with our educational system is that it's perfectly suited to turning out little assembly-line robots. I've personal experience with a system totally unsuited to anyone else. It's completely impossible to fix it as it's a positively reinforced (positive feedback loop) system. Thomas Sowell has covered this extensively.

    2. Tom 13

      @AC

      Not even education. Before you can start on education you need a moral foundation. Half the people in my country don't want to hear that. Most of the people in yours don't. Or worse, they think they already have one when the truth is that is as corrupt as anything born in hell.

  6. SoaG

    A quibble

    "The participants in those events clearly could not tell right from wrong. "

    They knew (both the looters on the streets and the ones in office), they just don't care, and not just about right or wrong either.

    So many people don't care anymore, that, even those of us that still care in the choices of our own actions, lean more and more to the sentiment captured by Mr Flugennock above.

  7. Trigonoceps occipitalis

    As Robert the Architec says:

    "Can we fix it?"

    "Not a bloody chance!"

    1. Tom 13

      Re: As Robert the Architec says:

      Actually, you're the only people who can fix it. But each and every one of you has to fix it. Starting with yourselves. Yes, it will be a bloody hard slog. But it is the only way to fix it.

  8. Christoph

    We need a country with a highly educated population and a healthy economy, that doesn't want anything to do with the Thatcherite rubbish that all the big three parties spout.

    And in a couple of weeks time we may have one. Just not in England.

    1. JonP
      Joke

      Is something happening in Wales then?

  9. Cipher

    Rewarding Failure...

    ...leads to more rewarding failure. If an institution or business fails, then so be it. Demand will prod Supply into replacing it. Or not. The people shouldn't be picking winners in the marketplace via taxes administered by people who have no experience in the matter.

    Decentralization of power is the key to survival, not 5 Year Plans.

  10. Daniel von Asmuth
    Childcatcher

    "politically unstable, if not ideologically opposed to western democracy"

    I suppose this is referring to the North-Sea oil wells, that may soon fall into the hands of the Republic Of Scotland.......

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: "politically unstable, if not ideologically opposed to western democracy"

      I look forward to ISIS's efforts to take Aberdeen

      1. DocJames
        Joke

        Re: "politically unstable, if not ideologically opposed to western democracy"

        They wouldn't manage the length of Union St before deciding it's too cold, no matter how much oil there is in the North Sea.

        And don't they already have enough oil of their own?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sport osa similar discussions...

    ...with US centric viel, due to writer's home country but still people around the world participate in discussions... See 'the archdruid report' - there is sort of similar but different viestiä of there things...

  12. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    "was carried out personally by Richard Feynman"

    Feynman's own essay on the subject is quite clear that he was tipped off by someone else and merely provided the media presence necessary to put the evidence into the public domain. I'll stick my neck out here and say he'd be a little upset at the way popular culture has deified him. He enjoyed the limelight, but he'd have hated the thought that personalities might be bigger than either evidence or a decent bit of research by a competent nobody.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "was carried out personally by Richard Feynman"

      "Feynman's own essay on the subject is quite clear that he was tipped off by someone else and merely provided the media presence necessary to put the evidence into the public domain"

      You mean he actually read the emails that the engineers send back up to management, who totally ignored them.

      'Managers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ''exaggerated the reliability of the space shuttle to the point of fantasy''' ref

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Mushroom

        Misplaced incentives

        In many cases the problem is that the group which chooses to take the risks that eventually leads to the failure is not the same one that suffers the consequences. Hence the downside of failure for them is disproportionately small.

        I bet those NASA managers wouldn't have been so relaxed about the reliability of the Shuttle if they were the ones who were going to fly on it.

        1. DocJames
          Windows

          Re: Misplaced incentives

          I bet they would have been just as relaxed. I think they genuinely didn't have a clue (see icon), and their cognitive dissonance is doubtless going to be the subject of a future article (I hope).

        2. Johan Bastiaansen

          Re: Misplaced incentives

          I couldn't agree more.

          A stable, self correcting system would require that people who make the right decisions and are contributing to society, can reap, at least part off, the benefits. And people who make bad decisions, especially when they do that on a regular basis because their decisions are based on an incorrect mental model, have to face the consequences.

          When the same people, or the same caste of people, is in charge long enough, they will try to disconnect from reality, and from the consequences of their actions. This is something a society can not allow.

          1. Tom 13

            Re: they will try to disconnect from reality

            I'm not even sure it is a case of "trying" so much as it is something that happens. People start deferring to you, doing favors, etc. Eventually you come to think of it as natural, perhaps even the natural order of things. From what we see with Congress on this side of the pond, within 10 years it is rare to find someone who has not been transformed by it.

        3. Tom 13

          Re: Misplaced incentives

          So, do you think it's time to implement a bunch of welders pools*? Or are there just too damn many managers for that to be effective either?

          *On early submarines (maybe to this day) all of the welders who worked on the sub had to put their name into a pool. One name was drawn and that welder accompanied the sub on its first at sea trial.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

  13. Martin Summers Silver badge

    Call Up

    Would the author of this article and all commentards with up votes only, please proceed to senior political office forthwith. Thank you.

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