So, the purpose of the system is what it does, but "do not make simple things complex".

[graydon@canada.masto.host]

So, the purpose of the system is what it does, but "do not make simple things complex".

In the 1970s, a bunch of incumbents with control over some oil production reacted to the OPEC oil embargo by concluding that the route to security was control of every piece of dirt where oil could be found. (Rather than the much better "why are we relying on this stuff? The world is raining energy, why don't we build a bucket?" approach.)

They picked the approach that preserved their incumbency.

[graydon@canada.masto.host]

This got us Reagan, in large part because their incumbency also relies on being able to organize society to force people to buy gas; it got us a much less stable world courtesy of authoritarian petrostates having their power expanded, and it created the time of angry weather.

As a security-increasing policy, "failure" won't cover "create extinction threat". (Greatest display of incompetence in human history, and it's not close.) As a "preserve incumbency" policy, it's a success.

[graydon@canada.masto.host]

Most people in notional democracies have far less agency than they did sixty years ago; the allowable range of political discourse is much less, the scope of proposed policy has collapsed into a single beige dictatorship of preserving incumbency (effectively, established wealth) at all costs, and while the VLSI revolution was very distracting it was no kind of revolution in practice.

Effective responses, by definition, have to stick the root cause; get rid of incumbency.