Shades of Armageddon

Earlier in Our tangled web of expertise I mused about the complex global superstructure we have built and the incredible degree of specialization and individual expertise upon which we rely for just about everything that we do.

This general theme is taken up by author Barry C. Lynn in End of the Line : The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation:

"Our corporations have built the most efficient system of production the world has ever seen, perfectly calibrated to a world in which nothing bad ever happens. But that is not the world we live in. Not only is human civilization riven routinely by earthquakes and hurricanes, but so too is it shattered by wars and acts of terror and simple human error. Which means it is only a matter of time until we experience our next industrial crash, perhaps one much worse than any we have yet known."

I must get this book, it seems to have struck a chord with quite a few reviewers. It seems that we've painted ourselves into a corner ...