(2023-01-20) Manufacturing The Permacrisis

John Robb: Manufacturing the Permacrisis Let’s start with our working definition of a permacrisis. It is:

• Series of crisis events (this isn’t unusual across history).
• Each crisis event is complex making it difficult and time-consuming to solve (this complexity is novel).
• Each event feeds into and amplifies future events (this is novel).
  • (He's not talking about objective feeding-into, so much as a feedback-loop of decaying trust) (cf elite, culture war)

Based on this definition, the Permacrisis started just after the turn of the century (2001) with 9/11. (World Trade Center)

the solutions used to “solve” the Permacrisis are doing more damage than the crisis itself

For example:

9/11

• invasion of Iraq
• Afghanistan
• militarization of police

The financial crisis in 2008. (credit crisis 2008)

• The mountain of fraud that led to the problem went largely unpunished
• we gave them bailouts and subsidies instead.

The same has been true for our response to COVID (mandatory lockdowns and vaccines as well as excessive corporate subsidies), Jan 6th (politicized censorship), the invasion of Ukraine (a new cold war with Russia), and climate (ESG and bans) in the networked world.

A Loss of Trust

This inability to formulate acceptable solutions, or at a minimum, answers that do less harm than the crisis itself, has catastrophically damaged public trust in the government.

Since 9/11 and the start of the Permacrisis, trust has fallen to a rolling average of less than 20%, regardless of who is president.

It should be clear from the data that the rise of social networking and the election of Donald Trump didn’t damage this trust; our government’s solutions to crisis events did.

This loss of trust makes it harder for the government to decide on and implement solutions

Social networking has weaponized this distrust

Framework: Endless Surprise

Another factor made worse by the network is that we treat each new crisis as a complete surprise

This has led to the following self-defeating problem-solving narratives:

No allowance for pragmatism or planned responses

No time for sound decision-making.

No room for accountability.

Networked Problem Solving

Due to declining trust in the government, we’re increasingly seeing the inchoate (rudimentary, early alpha, more likely to fail than work correctly) networked decision-making system taking center stage in crisis response

Networked corporations. An aggressive, social AI-fueled effort to manage public discussion

Networked swarms. Sprawling, open-source networks of civilians and media/corporate/government insiders that amplifies the immediacy and scale of the threat

Networked dissent. Sprawling open source networks that quickly form to oppose all centralized solutions or initiatives.