Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [94]
A quantification trap opens when data of questionable value is deployed as an "empirical metric" to support a policy or forecast which then serves to mislead policymakers, enterprises, buyers and sellers. Examples include costly public transport systems justified and constructed with borrowed money based on quantifications that mask the inherent unknowns and risks behind a falsely confident facade of data.
Another classic example is the data presented on the enormous profits to be gained by the purchase of a building, plant, etc.
In other cases, well-meaning researchers seek to quantify situations in which data is inherently incoherent, ambiguous or only marginally relevant. The State or other powerful enterprise may present ginned-up deceptively packaged quantifications which support its policies or propaganda: for instance, the birth-death model of job creation, which magically creates hundreds of thousands of jobs each month in the depths of the current Depression.
7. Skillset Trap. Similar to a saturation trap: the sunk costs of training and the awarding of degrees create a force akin to a mighty river behind skillsets for which there is no market. We may find that MBAs now classify as skillset traps as countless business schools seek to milk candidates for tuition even as the market for middle managers dries up. We might even find that the entire college/university degree industry is largely a skillset trap as the skills being taught have no analog in the job market.
At the lower end of the employment scale, "computer repair" training continues to attract funding even as it becomes ever cheaper to simply replace defective computers with new ones. Such functionally obsolete skills qualify as skillset traps.
8. Trend Extrapolation Trap. While it can be argued that this is merely a cognitive bias, not a trap, in cases such as the "accidental demographics" behind Social Security then I think it qualifies as a trap, as there is no way out of a policy based on a false trend extrapolation.
The Social Security system (and indeed, all "pay as you go" entitlements) was founded on a worker-retiree ratio of about 20-to-1 and an average lifespan of about 64 years. The trap was the extension of these demographic trends into the distant future.
Now the worker-recipient ratio has slipped to about 2.5-to-1 as the average lifespan has risen to 80+ years even as the retirement age has dropped to 63 and numerous other entitlements such as SSI have been added to the once barebones Social Security program.
Despite official assurances (which ring increasingly hollow), the reality is these programs will go broke far sooner than is politically convenient. Please read The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America's Economic Future and Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future.
Another trend extrapolation is "economic growth is only way to expand prosperity." While this trend has the appearance of a permanent "law," never before has humanity been so numerous or so dependent on a dwindling, easily portable high-energy resource, i.e. petroleum for that growth and its attendant prosperity.
As several billion people aspire to the high-energy consumption lifestyle enjoyed by the advanced economies, we can anticipate an end to the trendline of ever higher energy consumption and ever higher growth based on resource exploitation.
It is certainly possible that the world's population will enjoy a high-energy consumption lifestyle in 20 years (based on some "miracle technology" which is scaled up at enormous expense to planetary supply levels), but it certainly won't be enjoying cheap, abundant petroleum-based growth.
For it is also true that the world faces not just Peak Oil but Peak Coal (anthracite), Peak Uranium, and peak rare metals. Technocrat cheerleaders promise that new technologies will seamlessly arise to replace not just fossil