We cannot rely on any system where its reliability is based upon things that we cannot see or have no way to understand – i.e. you can’t pick up the phone or visit and speak to the farmer and ask in which field the wheat being sent to the local mill and then to the local baker is being grown.
The only system that we rely on is one that we either have responsibility for ourselves, or is being driven and managed by other people we know and can trust – because they are people who we may not be interacting with, but are around us and perhaps without us being aware, we are passing them and they are therefore in our lives each and every day.
As I write, I’m smiling. I know that there are people – and lots of them, who would respond to where this is going by jumping in and scornfully suggesting that what I am talking about does nothing more than hark back to either a medieval or romantically impractical age.
All well and good – if you live in a world that does everything for you, tells you that you can be everything to everyone else and does everything other than help you to help yourself, the very moment that even the smallest thing goes wrong!
The simple things are the most intelligent. It’s the process of storing up problems – and potentially catastrophic ones for us, where the real £benefit for others of hiding behind complexity and very complex systems lies.
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