The problem is, like always, other people.
The market is built on lots of small actors doing local, short-term optimizations. So let's say you're a supplier, and you come up with a disciplined, honest estimate of a buffer you need in your supply chain to cope with the next epidemic. This raises your costs, and as a buyer who cares primarily about next quarter's report sheets, I'll go with your competitor who doesn't include any safety margin, because they'll be cheaper. Will this land me into trouble in a few years? Probably, but that's out of scope of quarterly reporting, and thus not my problem.
Ultimately, the society is enslaved to the aggregate market pressures. We won't fix things until we can figure out how to build safety margins into the market and make them stick.
Re:Operation Dark Winter
by marcosdumay on Friday March 06, 2020 @07:52AM
(#22503174)
That's why people created that government thing, that isn't subject to market pressures.
One could only wish it was true. In reality, the government simply has much higher inertia.
It is well known bias to under or overestimate rare events. It requires discipline and honest effort to properly estimate probabilities and attach them to possible effects and then follow through with proper response.
A special category is events that might end civilization/nation/locality etc. as we know it. Compared to more mundane problems, you want a special kind of insurance against them.
In the infinite game the objective is not to beat everybody else but to avoid those special events that might end your ability to play altogether.