Overload
5 years, 8 months, 23 days, 4 hours
29 October 2023
This chain of thought was triggered by an article in The Economist which argued that the UK government was failing in its duty to citizens by increasingly relying on rationing for the allocation of public services.
‘Forcing Britons to queue, cajole receptionists or go without the services they are owed is no way to run a country’, the article chided. It described rationing as the ‘miserable compromise’ when a state fails to properly fund the services required, and/or run those services efficiently.
Rationing is not always confined to public services. Two weeks ago I spent two hours on a call to my bank, because I was told if I left the call they would immediately close the case without resolving it and move to the next call in the no doubt endless queue. Insurance companies, mobile providers, delivery companies, travel agents, we are all now victims of their irritating music while we wait, often to get them to resolve their mistake on something we have paid for.
But is the quest to annihilate the queue actually achievable? Another article in the same Economist issue quoted the founder of the National Health Service, William Beveridge, averring that its very existence would lead to a reduction in the number of cases it needed to treat, and noted a subsequent commentator’s observation that this was ‘a miscalculation of sublime dimensions’. Global scale we have another hundred years ahead of growth in population, living standards, life expectancy and life expectations. Perhaps the efficiencies of Gen AI will provide the solution. Or perhaps that will be another miscalculation of sublime dimensions because the more we can get, the more we want.
It takes me back to the piece I wrote last May where I said I have spent my life trying to do much in too little time. And the systems around us encourage that. We only have, on average, four thousand weeks in each of our lives. Perhaps the answer to my question is we need to be impatient on the things that matter, and relaxed on everything else. Watch the beautiful film ‘Living’. It makes the same point.