Read it at The Guardian (UK)
Chatham House report says Britain could only withstand a week of disruption after a major event before spiralling into chaos
'Just-in-time' business models put UK at greater risk in event of disasters, warns thinktank
by Fiona Harvey
Building to tight tolerances with little slack and no redundancy is a sophomoric engineering mistake. We don't build bridges like that to save a few bucks, because there would be huge liability exposure, not to mention the consequences of the failure itself. Why build a whole economy on that model to eek the last drop of profit?
It's not just the JIT system for production the accountants have got hold of.
ReplyDeleteThis is also sat on an 'efficient capital structure', ie a load of debt.
I should have added that this is apparently just what the Army Corps of Engineers did in constructing the New Orleans levies to resist a class 3 hurricane, figuring the probability of a class five was too low to be concerned with in comparison with the cost of building out to a higher tolerance. Some saving.
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