No one knows for certain the end from the beginning of any major public concern. On Y2K, any opinion or forecast is a guess, an informed one hopefully, but a guess nonetheless.

Life is filled with risk and surprising outcomes. That is why we pay insurance premiums to cover improbable, but not impossible surprises that can damage our health, homes, cars, and businesses. Every such situation requires a personal assessment. Should your car insurance include a collision rider? If not, you can reduce your current out-of-pocket expense. How risk averse are you?

Right now, people are attempting to assess Y2K risk. Most are not on the Internet. They are not exposed to the data, commentary, and contrary viewpoints available there. Prepare or not prepare? Prepare for what? For how long? For these answers, the majority relies on the mass media and word of mouth.

Thankfully, we are almost past having to hear that Y2K was just a "hyped-up- money-making hoax from the get go." Too many Y2K crashes and data corruptions have been documented to support that opinion. Too many bottom line conscious CEOs and government officials have authorized spending millions of dollars just to insure the continuity of business and services to believe it is a hoax. The question now is how much has been effectively done and will be done prior to January 2000 in both the U.S. and in other countries? What is the array of possible and likely outcomes in terms of short-term, localized critical infrastructure failures, longer term economic ripple effects, and any coincident acts of terrorism? Without a clearer picture of future possibilities, it is extraordinarily difficult to decide what to prepare for as a family, a business, a government, or a community.

It is the essence of a complex, advanced civilization (especially one that covers the globe) to have a highly specialized division of labor. We know our own specialty well, but have to rely on other specialists for other goods and services, support, and guidance. It is a rational decision to remain uninformed about the details of most other specialties. Social scientists call this "rational ignorance." There just isn't enough time both to do our work well and to learn many other specialties. We are forced by the nature of our society to put our trust in "the experts" almost all the time.

However, there are exceptions. If you or a loved one is diagnosed with a debilitating or life threatening disease, it is no longer rational to remain uninformed. Especially when you soon learn that the experts in the field disagree on the character of the diagnosis and the prescription. You realize that you can either surrender your judgment to one of these experts or you can take responsibility for learning as much as you can and making any final decisions. To do this you need to acquire facts and evaluate the competing experts' inferences and forecasts.

Currently, the majority of Y2K authorities in positions of institutional power appear to have reached a consensual diagnosis and prescription. I include here the Federal government, both the White House and the Senate, the Federal Reserve System, the national trade associations and the corporations they represent; as well as the mainstream print and television mass media. It is the politically correct establishment position or "The PC Forecast," as I call it. The PC Forecast is the public opiate which appeals to our cultural inertia and optimism.

It goes something like this:

The back of Y2K has been broken. It is all mop up from here on. With the exception of some foreign countries, especially the developing countries, and a number of smaller businesses and governments in the U.S. that are lagging, there will be no widespread Y2K impact in our nation. The few that may occur, that could have disruptive consequences, will be highly localized and last no more than two to three days at worst - sort of a long, weekend winter storm.

In real terms, it follows that you need do nothing to prepare, even if you live in one of those rare locales which may experience a brief disruption in the delivery of goods and services. Why? Because anyone can get through up to three days with the resources at hand and maybe a little help from neighbors. It also follows that having thus trivialized any impact that many of the owners of smaller businesses and managers of smaller governments will continue to ignore addressing any Y2K issues they may actually have.

The federal agency on point for the "three days at worst" message is the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). Anyone advocating a greater time period than three days, e.g. The Red Cross (one week) or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (14 days), by implication, is overreacting. The mantra of the PC Forecast is "Three days good. More days bad."

The commentators who subscribe to the PC Forecast seem to focus solely on the level of consumables to have on hand - food, flashlights, and candles. Having more cash on hand or more prescription drugs than normal is discouraged. Even given the winter storm analogy, the purchase of wood stoves and generators is also discouraged.

As for deciding where to be on January 2000, I have heard only derisive remarks about the foolishness of "heading for the hills," or "building bunkers in the wilderness." Nothing is said of the trade-offs between staying in a metropolitan high rise - not far from a neighborhood with a history of rioting - or planning to be with family or friends in a less dense locale.

And why is a winter storm of only three days duration considered an analogous situation? What about storms of longer duration given all the current unknowns? Shelter and warmth are critical in the winter - less so in Miami than in Maine - more so than water and food in the initial stages of a natural disaster in winter. Even Peter de Jager, who is decidedly more sanguine in recent weeks, says that preparations for a period like that experienced in last year's Montreal ice storm would be appropriate. That storm's impact wasn't simply the one to five weeks without electricity in the cities and rural areas. Once the power was restored, the repercussions continued for much longer.

The PC Forecast assures us that power and water will continue to flow based on the surveys and reports and completion projections - except in a few locales. Which locales we are not told. And if, in a specific locale, the power and water is off for more than three days...what then?

The PC Forecast has virtually no examination of the economic impacts of technological failures. An offhand recognition is given to the widely reported fact that Y2K remediation is seriously lagging, not only in the developing countries, but in industrially advanced nations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Where are the discussions about the potential economic impacts of disruptions in our global, just-in-time, supply chain dependencies due to Y2K failures? What about such failures in small- and medium-sized U.S. corporations?

I suspect we shall see the majority of the mass media adopting the PC Forecast. It will be increasingly difficult to argue for the probability of more widespread disruptions for longer periods and the more extended preparedness such forecasts imply. Not only is it a human tendency to make the world seem rational by denying anything inconsistent with one's wishes or prior beliefs, it is also true that how the mass media frames a public concern heavily influences much of the public response.

In order to develop an effective Y2K Action Plan, we must first ask the following:

1. What facts are known?
2. What array of inferences can reasonably be drawn from those facts?
3. Why should I value one expert's forecast over another?

Only by honest evaluation of the answers to these questions can one hope to get closer to an action plan that makes sense.



-- Critt Jarvis (middleground@critt.com), April 01, 1999

Answers

Posted on Westergaard:

http://www.y2ktime bomb.com/DSA/VP/vp9913.htm

~C~

-- Critt Jarvis (middleground@critt.com), April 01, 1999.

This is typical of the polarization that has occurred on the Y2K issue from the day people began to take notice.

The solution to an untenable position is presented using hyperbole: A rural retreat, that might be sought by many simply because of the peace and quiet it offers, is "heading for the hills with an AK-47." Taking action to insure adequate food and water supplies for a family or shelter from the winter weather is held up to ridicule and labeled "hoarding."

I'm particularly unimpressed by people who advise not getting a generator, or not getting a wood stove, as if they have the answers for everyone else's life style or are qualified to make such decisions.

Prudent actions are always scoffed at by people who lack prudence. In the wisdom literature, such people are called "fools." One form of scoffing has been overstatment, followed by ridicule of the overstated position......a form of erecting a straw man. This is a debating tactic. But, this -- Y2K -- is not an issue to be debated in this manner. Human life is too important to be debated by man.

Frankly, it can be of no concern to me should most people refuse to prepare. My concern is to warn them of what may be coming, so that they can decide. If they decide to prepare, fine. If they decide to do nothing, that's their decision.

There are two areas where this presents a problem: family and neighbors, and in these areas I'm willing to spend a little more time, but even here, each and every family ultimately becomes responsible for their own decisions.

Well reasoned article by Porlier, Critt.

-- De (delewis@inetone.net), April 01, 1999.

".......I have heard only derisive remarks about the foolishness of "heading for the hills," or "building bunkers in the wilderness." Nothing is said of the trade-offs between staying in a metropolitan high rise - not far from a neighborhood with a history of rioting - or planning to be with family or friends in a less dense locale."

Sorry, a faulty lead tag cause this to be deleted from the beginning of the previous post. Let's try the entire thing again.

------------------------

This is typical of the polarization that has occurred on the Y2K issue from the day people began to take notice.

The solution to an untenable position is presented using hyperbole: A rural retreat, that might be sought by many simply because of the peace and quiet it offers, is "heading for the hills with an AK-47." Taking action to insure adequate food and water supplies for a family or shelter from the winter weather is held up to ridicule and labeled "hoarding."

I'm particularly unimpressed by people who advise not getting a generator, or not getting a wood stove, as if they have the answers for everyone else's life style or are qualified to make such decisions.

Prudent actions are always scoffed at by people who lack prudence. In the wisdom literature, such people are called "fools." One form of scoffing has been overstatment, followed by ridicule of the overstated position......a form of erecting a straw man. This is a debating tactic. But, this -- Y2K -- is not an issue to be debated in this manner. Human life is too important to be debated by man.

Frankly, it can be of no concern to me should most people refuse to prepare. My concern is to warn them of what may be coming, so that they can decide. If they decide to prepare, fine. If they decide to do nothing, that's their decision.

There are two areas where this presents a problem: family and neighbors, and in these areas I'm willing to spend a little more time, but even here, each and every family ultimately becomes responsible for their own decisions.

Well reasoned article by Porlier, Critt.

-- De (delewis@inetone.net), April 01, 1999.

"It is the essence of a complex, advanced civilization (especially one that covers the globe) to have a highly specialized division of labor."

Yes sir! We advanced civilization people know how to keep the drones...I mean slaves...uh laborers working to make us money.

What makes them think they are advanced? Recycled slave traders if you ask me.

-- freeus (noslaves@usa.liberty), April 01, 1999.