The Great Optimization Error: How the Super El Niño and Fertilizer Crisis Exposed Civilization’s Hidden Fragility (opens in new tab)

A farmer in Queensland recently described delaying fertilizer purchases because prices had become too unstable to predict profit margins confidently. Meanwhile, a shopper in Massachusetts stared at the price of eggs as though the eggs themselves had developed moral failings. These events appear unrelated. They are not. One of the strangest features of modern civilization is that most people have almost no emotional relationship to the systems keeping them alive. Food arrives. Water appears. L...