Sunday, January 18, 2009

Infrastructure Incompetence

As I recover with zapped back --New Year's Resolution: I'm going to become as flexible as a ballerina!-- I look upon all these latest infrastructure disasters, and how badly they have been handled. Just look at the Olympium Pool disaster and how it was never even acknowledged by anyone. I just got a note from a member who tells me all the lockers were ripped out, and they don't tell anybody anything.

And now the big freeze in downtown Toronto. This was in a 1930's building with a 1930's sprinkler system. Can you imagine what will happen in an earthquake?

Yes Virginia, our infrastructure is being handled badly. But why? I think it's because giant evil self-similar bureaucracies are controlling it, with their narrow-focus unions, who have to be that way for self-defence. Can you imagine a bright young union electrician going into that hydro vault and noticing the sprinkler system was decrepit? He would be told: "It's not your job." Even if he persisted, they would kill him for it, since it would reflect badly on the sprinkler union, and management.

So, as I've said before, all these failures follow a Power Law, which is a horrible thing. We can expect all the little failures, such as the Olympium to be hushed up, and we will get hit by the huge failures. If there is an earthquake, we get hit all at once.

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