Gas Rationing: New Yorkers, Welcome to the Third World

Gas Rationing: New Yorkers, Welcome to the Third World - Forbes: "In a very uncomfortable way, Sandy points out the dangers of our devotion to economic efficiency: when you engineer your economy to cut out waste, you design with lowest costs in mind, and redundancy is eliminated.  You rely on sophisticated systems to provide just-in-time inventory.  You cut your utility budgets to the bone in order to keep electricity bills at a minimum.  You cut costs everywhere, because that’s what people want.  And all of that works just fine until something – a storm, a tsunami, some unanticipated Black Swan throws a monkey wrench into the finely tuned, highly calibrated economy.  One moment all is fine.  The next minute, ATMs don’t work.  Gasoline pumps don’t function.  The lights don’t come on.  And the entire machine breaks down. "