Re: Year 2000 Supply/Production Risks

["Christopher Byrne" <cbyrne98@hotmail.com>]

Bob,

I remember reading this essay some time back and I've seen it
mentioned several times in Y2K discussion forums. Its funny, it seems
to be one of those 101 stopping points many of us travel through on
our way to getting a grip of this beast. You could add to that Gary
North's links, Yourdon, the pre-revisionist DeJager (I've never seen
such peddling lately!), the pump action logic of Paul Milne, Infomagic
and the others from the CSY2K battleground, the newswire
domino/cascading failure game. And for those of us of liberal heart,
there's the new agers Carmichael, Theobold and, yup, a few
well-intentioned leading lights from this list.

The premise is the same - two sides of the same meme - a techno
systemic view of the world on the edge of collapse (bad code, bad
morality, bad butterflies, whatever). I bought it, you bought it, too
many of us have bought it. Nobody can prove it or unprove it, and
nobody in their right mind wants to be proved right.

I'm getting tired of this meme - tired and frustrated after 9 months
of alienation from family, friends, colleagues. I "got it" 9 months
ago and I've heard nothing new since - no new knowledge, no new
insights, no serious challenges to the premise. Just a lot of fear and
confusion and opportunism (and that's just me!). And now we're into
the home run and the meme's moving offline and into the real world.
Dangerous territory. Time to change tactics. Time to think people
rather than systems, feelings rather than logic. Time to recognise
that what holds us together as humans has as much to do with trust and
confidence as it has to do with code or chance.

Like a lot of people my mantra in all of this used to be "Hope for the
best and prepare for the worst". No more. Any sensible person (I know
that's loaded) can see that this is a recipe for a self-fulfilling
prophecy. As my mum says: "What do you mean 'hope'? What 'worst'?".
She's right. This isn't the language of preparation, it's the language
of uncertainty, anxiety, a preparation for panic. She'll buy into a
bit of disruption prep, a few days, maybe even a week or so hunkering
down without electricity and running water (we've experienced worse
before), but beyond that she'll want a cast-iron guarantee that the
lights are coming on, the bank still has her pension, that the
radiator works and she can make a decent cup of tea. Any stuff about
systemic complex TEOTWAWKI new-age revolutions (i.e. you can put the
kettle on in a year or so, darling, once we've got the church or
maypole up). Any infection from the meme, and she goes under.

It's not going to happen. I'm not going to let it happen. I'll accept
inconvenience mode, but not survival mode. Nor will i take my chances
with resurrection mode - progressive or theocratic. It's too risky -
even you guys who buy into the complex systems stuff can see that.
You'll lose control.

So what does this amount to? It means no more posting of TEOTWAWKI
stories, or stories that imply the same. No more arguing the TEOTWAWKI
toss from unfalsifiable assumptions. I'll advocate for moderate "rainy
day" prep for families and workaround contingency planning for my
organisation (someting they do anyway). I'll bug the technical
authorities to become confidence builders, nodes of trust. I'm going
for continuity first and foremost, and I'll work around discontiniuty
as and when it happens.

Sorry for rambling - but I don't want too many people to go where I've
been. It's a friggin' nightmare and a waste of time and energy.

Chris Byrne


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>To: y2k@tao.ca
>From: Bob Olsen <bobolsen@tao.ca>
>Subject: [interdoc-y2k 214] Year 2000 Supply/Production Risks
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>
>
>  An essay, "I, Pencil" by Leonard E. Read, explains the complexity of
>  late 20th century supply systems and helps us to understand the
>  effect of cascading computer and embedded chip failure that will
>  result from Year 2000 problems.
>
>  Gary North cites this essay under "The #1 Issue: The Collapse of the
>  Division of Labor": http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/264
>
>  The URL he links the essay to is
>  http://www.fee.org/about/ipencil.html
>
>  Below are the key paragraphs excerpted from that essay:
>                  ........................
>
>
>
>I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe
>
> .... snip .....
>
>My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight
>grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate
>all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in
>harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of
>all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their
>fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement
>into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through
>all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their
>beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods.
>Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the
>loggers drink!
>
>The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you
>imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad
>engines and who construct and install the communication systems
>incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.
>
>Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into
>small, pencil- length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in
>thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason
>women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not
>a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many
>skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying
>the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other
>things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes,
>and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a
>Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's
>power!
>
>Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in
>transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.
>
>Once in the pencil factory--$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all
>capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine--each slat
>is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another
>machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places
>another slat atop--a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I
>are mechanically carved from this "wood- clinched'" sandwich.
>
>My "lead'" itself--it contains no lead at all--is complex. The
>graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make
>their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the
>graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks
>and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even
>the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth--and the
>harbor pilots.
>
>The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium
>hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are
>added such as sulfonated tallow--animal fats chemically reacted with
>sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture
>finally appears as endless extrusions--as from a sausage grinder--cut
>to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees
>Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are
>then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from
>Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.
>
>My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the
>ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor
>beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why,
>even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow
>involves the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!
>
>Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon
>black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is
>carbon black?
>
>My bit of metal--the ferrule--is brass. Think of all the persons who
>mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet
>brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule
>are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The
>complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on
>it would take pages to explain.
>
>Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade
>as "the plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me.
>An ingredient called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a
>rubber-like product made by reacting rape- seed oil from the Dutch
>East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common
>notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous
>vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and
>the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sulfide.
>
>......... end excerpts ......
>
>
>  Now imagine the thousands of computers, the millions of lines of
>  software code and the millions of embedded chips in this long and
>  complex production chain.  Then ask, what is the probability that
>  some or many of those links will fail because of year 2000
>  non-compliance.  Finally, ask, what would be the consequences of
>  individual failures in this production chain.
>  
>  My guess is that all supply/production chains are certain to be
>  affected by year 2000 non-compliance failures and that consumer
>  costs will be seriously affected as a result.
>
>
>   .............................................
>   Bob Olsen, Toronto            bobolsen@tao.ca
>   .............................................
>
>


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