On Systemic Debt
thedailywtf.com
thedailywtf.com
* The preference of well-off whites to pull the ladder up behind them;
* The preference of police unions to protect their members at all costs;
* The preference of the average non-black voter to not have to think about this crap.
I like that this is a pragmatic perspective that doesn't assume malicious intent behind most institutional racism (and tech debt, to continue the article's metaphor). People naturally act in their self-interest; it's not "I hate you" it's just "I'm not going to think about consequences when I optimize this solution for myself." While there are certainly many bad actors both in the creation and maintenance of our broken systems, IMO the vast majority of people are risk averse, passive participants in the status quo - i.e., falling into the third bucket. Even the more active participants in the first two buckets can justify their actions from inside their bubble; the horrible negative consequences are most visible only when placed in contrast to situations they often don't see.
Fortunately, people are recognizing the consequences of their actions - though not universally, and of course far too late to stop the death and marginalization of large numbers.
I hope it's a sign we're on the path to reduce or eliminate society's tech debt before the system crashes. Like all complex projects though, it needs sustained strong leadership.
This. There's the clearly overt racism people love to upload/watch on youtube, but I like this sentence how it captures the 'institutional' racism. (I have a hard time conveying this in conversation with friends.) And over time this has created a very deep divide, along race. I'm reminded of an Alan Greenspan quote (that a can't find current, so I'm going to butcher it in paraphrase): beware the possibility that segments of the population will become "reluctant to participate" if the hill is too steep or if they perceive the system is against them, because the system will then be worthless because people will exit. I think he said this around the 2008 collapse.
Relating back to technical systems, it reminds me of implementing a CRM (customer relationship management) or other collaborative data system. Higher difficulty of use translates to lower participation, which leads to lower value, which leads to lower use...and so on.
From what I can see, the proposed solution to "institutional racism" is to browbeat everybody into thinking nicer thoughts. But we've been trying that for decades now and it hasn't worked.
Whereas, the solution for institutional corruption is to change the structure of the institutions, so that the people in them have different, better incentives. In many cases, I think that means reducing the power of the institutions over people's lives, and putting more power and choice back into the hands of each individual.
This is a straw man, everything about the current push ("from what I can see") is towards exactly the types of anti corruption efforts you described.
- Deescalation training
- Defunding (extreme)
- Demilitarizing the police
- Community outreach
- Reduce over-policing
etc.
These are the things that have been talked about and pushed for the past decade (well, in some circles decades, but nationally it's a conversation that comes and goes, but has stayed at the top the past decade or so).
Not "everything" is. Yes, "anti-corruption efforts" are being pushed. But you have shifted your ground. Now you're talking about "anti corruption efforts". Before you were talking about "institutional racism". The latter is, as I said, narrower; it amounts to saying, first, that the institutional corruption has racism as its sole or primary root cause (which I think is false--I think racism is a symptom of corruption, but not the only one, and certainly not its cause), and second, that the only reason to fix institutional corruption is to fix racism (which is also false). And that is exactly the kind of rhetoric I see all over the place.
The reason to fix institutional corruption is that it's corruption. Citizens of every demographic are affected by institutional corruption and want to fix it. I think it's much better to unite around that common goal than to talk about "racism", which is only going to divide people who should be united against corruption.
But as words are important it's important to not dismiss intentional, systemic racism that we know definitely exists.
That has never been the fix for institutional racism; the whole point of efforts to get people to recognize racism as an institutional problem rather than a mere personal one is so that the institutional problems which maintain it can be attacked. If you make the above claim sincerely, then you seriously have been paying approximately zero attention to anyone addressing institutional racism ever.
> But we've been trying that for decades
Whether what you describe or the actual fixes pushed by people advocating to address institutional racism in law enforcement, no, we mostly haven’t. We've mostly been backing the institutions charged with institutional racism, and not trying anything, which is why a movement that has spent most of the time up until the eruption in support in the wake of George Floyd’s murder marginalized even on the Left has grown up trying to get people motivated to have ant concern at all for the issue.
I mean, there were the Obama-era federal investigations that were ostentatiously discontinued by the incoming Trump Administration (which definitely fall into the driving institutional reform, not thinking nicer thoughts, camp), but not a lot else.
> Whereas, the solution for institutional corruption is to change the structure of the institutions
That's what the people talking about institutional racism have been saying since they started talking about it; that is like the entire import of the modifier “institutional”: that the source and, therefore, the solution is in the structure of institutions.
No, the whole point of efforts to get people to recognize racism as an institutional problem rather than a mere personal one has been to co-opt the much greater power of institutions as compared to individuals in the effort to browbeat people into thinking nice thoughts. Yes, institutions will sometimes reluctantly settle for people just exhibiting nice behavior if that's the best that can be done at a particular time, but since even people who have never in their life shown a sign of racism in their behavior are still forced to undergo continual training in "diversity" and "awareness", clearly behavior alone is not what is being targeted.
No, again, it's been to identify and address the institutional malfunctions. E.g., the people addressing institutional racism in policing right now aren't asking for police or anyone else to think nice thoughts, they are calling for systemic reforms (e.g., 8cantwait) to, defunding and redistributing some of the functions of, and/or dismantling and redistributing all of the functions of police departments.
The ones I see are. They aren't talking about respecting the rule of law and protecting the civil rights of citizens. They're talking about how people need to be "educated" about the trials and tribulations of minorities (actually of one particular minority).
> defunding and redistributing some of the functions of, and/or dismantling and redistributing all of the functions of police departments.
This makes no sense to me. You don't support the rule of law and protect the civil rights of citizens by getting rid of police. You do that by having local governments that hold police accountable, and are themselves held accountable by citizens.
The institutional problems in question are mostly local. For example, the fact that a Minneapolis city cop killed a citizen without just cause is a problem for the local government in Minneapolis. Citizens there should be demanding to know how their local government allowed the police force to reach the level of corruption that allowed such an act to take place in the presence of other cops without any of them intervening. In the absence of good answers (and I find it hard to imagine how there could be good answers), those citizens should be voting out the government that allowed this to happen. In any case, a federal investigation is the wrong tool for that job.
> The institutional problems in question are mostly local
The institutional problems are local, state, and federal, but pointing out that they are “mostly local”, which is true, isn't a counter to pointing to the Obama-era investigations that the incoming Trump Administration loudly abandoned (both the ongoing investigations specifically, and the idea of conducting them in general), since those were federal investigations of systemic problems in local law enforcement agencies producing federal civil rights violations.
Trying to go for approaches that reframe the problems might be more productive. One point to take from this article is that there are interest groups that will lose power from any meaningful reform. Saying they're "white" is... just the same as usual. Saying that chief among them is quite likely the top management of law enforcement institutions is a lot more conductive to new solutions. And so on.
Loss of power is a huge motivator for the status quo. Are there ways to facilitate institutional change that do not weaken the power structures with the most influence?
It's an interesting thought experiment.
It's only debt in the sense that it eventually refluxes back to the issuer (the US Gov) after a substantial dwell time in the private sector, which is where it serves its actual purpose: to be the unit of account and denomination which private commercial transactions are settled in.
The US Gov is never at risk of being insolvent or defaulting on the thing that it alone can issue. Read more about MMT economics if you're curious.
MMT (“Modern Monetary Theory”) is rejected by most mainstream economists. The major proponents are politicians.
Modern Monetary Theory isn't a descriptive theory operating in the space of econonics (it's descriptive aspects are purely noncontroversial conventional economic theory), but normative/analytical theory of government policymaking in the area of finance (and, perhaps more critically, of describing government finance policy) that suggest abandoning norms and descriptions based on the fiction of the fisc (from whence “fiscal” policy gets its name), as there is no finite purse of externally created money that a government operating in it's own fiat currency must fill by taxes and borrowing in order to have money to spend. Government introduces money when it spends and destroys it when it collects, and the key things that ought to be of concern is the monetary effects of that creation and destruction and the distributional effects of how it is spent and from whom it is collected.
Conventional economics disagrees not at all with the descriptive pieces of this, though, yes, many economists oppose the normative aspects and prefer that governments honor the fiction of the fisc as if it were a real thing, while recognizing that it is, in fact, not. It's also true that many economists prefer a closer balance of the two sides of the revenue and spending sides of the imaginary fisc (presumably, their preference for maintaining the illusion is because they think that this contributes to their preferred policy outcome) then many MMT advocates do, though that divergence of opinion is technically outside of the domain of either descriptive economics or MMT, which doesn't prescribe any particular preference as regards the imaginary balance of the imaginary fisc.
The mainstream econ record is lately not one to be boasting about.
>The major proponents are politicians.
Incorrect, You'll find the major proponents are academics at University of Kansas City Missouri, The Levy Institute and Bard College in NY.
Do you disagree that social workers, therapists, child care advocates, educators, economists, and yes - even historians, writers, and artists - will be arguably more important than scientists, engineers, and mathematicians when it comes to issues like stemming racism?
Maybe you don't like the word "systemic." How would you describe fundamental issues that cross economic, social, political, and legal lines?
> Maybe you don't like the word "systemic."
I do, though. :-)
I intended to communicate that "systemic" is a very common word in certain (largish?) circles, maybe providing insight into its recent mainstream prominence. Since it was a short comment I took some liberty with the tone. I'd hoped the (rather gentle) "snark" would read ironically against the content, but may have missed the mark.
If you think that post meant I dislike the word "systemic" or hold it in contempt, you should try an academic literary critic's paper on their very favorite and most-highly-regarded novel. (Ooooh, more sick humanities burns based on semiotics and the sociology of academia! The hits keep on coming!)
Wow lucky guy, its only a few days for you.
I think I almost cried - after that I simply ignored them and deployed stuff when I wanted... :-)
Yeah, great. I'm sure nothing ever happened and if an outside audit showed up, the organization would have failed. Never mind if something bad happened, its not only you getting axed.
One of the problems I have with these kind of processes is that it often applies the same level of process to all systems when some systems really don't need that level of control.
However, if a rogue engineer might decide to flout the policy and deploy stuff whenever they wanted, then the business stands to profit from the gains more quickly and with less hassle. If the risk doesn't pay off, the responsible engineer can be fired for cause, itself demonstrating that the business is in control.
You may not want to take on uncompensated personal risk by operating outside these lazily-defined change management policies.
The difference between capitalism (as a whole) and communism (as a whole) is that one of them has one less layer of bureaucracy.
At JP Morgan (major US bank) the most brutal ticketing system (ITSM) required approval from 6 people in average. Could take a whole week easily just to get in touch with each of them and beg for a change to be approved. Thankfully there are very few systems that require this kind of ticket for access. (and there is a bug in the ticketing system anyway so could get a valid ticket in 15 minutes when truly needed twice a year).
The direct effect is that all systems relying on that for access control are abandoned and rotting because it's impossible to do preventative maintenance.
I worked at a place that had seasonal "no deploy" policies and had some software that controlled very expensive equipment. It was amazing the number of processes needed to update certain things.
It is a true balancing act. I do wonder if any actual courses exist that talk to business people about software life cycle, what is needed for a live system, and how to judge such things?
I guess I should be the one writing about software life cycle? Do you have any particular questions in mind? That will give me a starting point for a next blog article.
but two earlier statements could be used
1. management put up roadblocks for authorization to improve quality - keeping bad code longer
2. management rushed through bad code, more tech debt to fix later
i think this relates to joseph tainter's collapse complex civilizations declining marginal returns
re: 80 hours to add a text
there are declining marginals returns - yes because of complexity - but specifically because of total tech debt and increase of tech debt from at least the two points remy made
The questions of what debt is, what systems are, and what systemic debt are, deserve deeper inquiry, I'll allow. The notion of techical debt's been floated going back at least to Ward Cunningham (http://wiki.c2.com/?TechnicalDebt), and strikes me as highly useful.
Obvious cognates to both financial and evolutionary systems. As well as, as you note, Tainter's work on complexity.
Another point I've seen increasingly made of late, particularly post-Covid19, is of the conflict between efficiency and resilience.
Other references:
Martin Fowler, TechnicalDebt https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt
The Technical Debt Community: https://web.archive.org/web/20180718121933/http://www.ontech... (archive).
Numerous HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Reddit search: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q="technical+deb...
I've been thinking about this a lot. It shows up in everything from mechanical devices to the global economy.
> Fisher's Fundamental Theorem states—in terms appropriate to the present context—that the better adapted a system is to a particular environment, the less adaptable it is to new environments.
It's a systems thing. You build a system that is resilient to changes in the environment, it is less efficient if the environment doesn't change versus a system that is optimized for that specific environment. But the counterpoint is that the optimized system can't handle changes in the environment.
An important note is that assumptions are often not made explicitly. People don't sit down and say, "I think this vehicle will never be used on an oval race track, therefore 'steering' will be minimal, and the throttle will be full-open or full-closed". They just know they're making the fastest ground vehicle, and so those decisions are consequences of that specific objective. They happen to have an implied assumption that the vehicle will never need to operate at lower speeds or make turns.
This leads to an interesting tangent, System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) by Nancy Leveson has an objective of improving system safety. But one of the ways it does this is to raise those assumptions to the level of conscious awareness by creating an explicit system model. It's not the only process that does this, but it's making headway in the systems safety community these days.
Entropy is pretty obvious. Change is about the divergence between the system and the world it's reacting to. E.g., a payroll system that was fine in 1960 would not be fine today; our concepts of work and employment have changed significantly.
Learning is the most subtle thing for me. Knowledge is basically a ratchet: this year we know more than last year, and so on back. A software architecture that was brilliant in 1970 was outdated by 1980, and so on for every decade. As years go on, we learn more about good ways to build things, revealing previously unseen flaws in old systems.
One could argue that this concept of debt is unfair, that it's a moving target. That's true in some sense. But systems are things we create to improve the world, and the world was never going to sit still.
I have always understood technical debt as the systemic debt derived from human error, but it is nice to see how it is indistinguishable from the systemic debt "naturally" acquired when the environment changes (and I think of civilizations as natural rather than human made systems).
The company needed a way to manage large spreadsheets. They have their own spreadsheet product but it can't handle the size of the data so this one department uses Excel instead of their own thing.
This one cowboy coder whipped up a web app on the cloud to start to replace the existing pile off spreadsheets and people with a custom solution and fewer people. It's centered around the concept of Table View which is exactly what it sounds like.
Five years later, it's not finished, full of bugs, and also can't handle the large datasets. But they keep throwing devs and money at it. They're probably still working on it.
(It was full of wild weird stuff. For instance, there was a "unittest" that generated other unittests, at runtime, in memory.)
The more fearful and risk-averse approach will lock things into a local optimization with tremendous support costs and will accrue debt very fast. The bold approach will break out of the local maximum, but probably upset the apple cart.
It essentially restates the premise of the article, and is reasonably accurate from my experience. ("upset the apple cart" may understate the risks of a "ground up" rewrite, but there are plenty of "bold approaches" that are less dramatic).
It would be nice if down voters replied, it could be an interesting discussion.
Capitalism is the history of actors playing the role of problem solvers while acting as gatekeepers. IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, to name just a tiny obvious few.
Once you realize that problems are created that aren't meant to be solved you start to understand why the world is the way it is.
Software development has always been trivial. Coming up with a coherent set of business rules from a group of people with diverse political agendas? Therein lies your hell.
I'm interested to see how EU internal relations change over time.