Charlie StrossMar 16

RE: https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116232524241982831

Additional note: when foodprices rocket, that is ALMOST ALWAYS the trigger for civil unrest and revolutions. (The other is a fiscal/tax/revenue crisis, caused by government turning into rent-seeking by the rich *and* trying to fund a war simultaneously, as with the French Revolution.)

Does this look familiar to you, too?

Show threadGraydonMar 16

@cstross Right-to-repair is a huge issue for farm equipment.

One of the reasons is not so much that the OEM prices are high is that the stocks of spares are sized based on the order rate against the high prices; you order it, they make it, and you get it many weeks later.

Combine "the software servers are down" with "the supply chain to the plant that makes spares is disrupted" with "fuel prices are too high for profitable farming according to the financial system" and food supply shrinks.

Show threadannejohn
@graydon @cstross this "fuel prices are too high for profitable farming according to the financial system" and food supply shrinks" in the UK too, except it's fertiliser; report on BBC4 last week from farmer selling his fertiliser rather than planting the crop for which he'd planned to use it.
Mar 16 at 1:14pmWeb
Show threadGraydonMar 16

@annejohn @cstross Oh yeah. There's going to be a lot of that going on.

One of the absolutely critical things about OODA loops is to get them working on the same time scale as the problem. Only nothing structural thinks the problem is "having food to eat"; you've got a supermarket problem of maintaining margins, you've got a financial problem of minimizing risk, you've got a shipping problem that reduces to scheduling, but no systemic representation of "people need to eat every day".