The ‘structural’ problem is a cultural one. Every decision is made based on the profit end of the equations, rather than the ‘usefulness’ side of the business/government and its tools (or people in general). Managers and politicians pull a number out of their butt like “we have to reduce costs by 5% every year” and then apply it with a broad brush. They end up cutting staff and training, then believing they can contract that work at a moment’s notice somewhere in the Invisible Hand Job marketplace. They don’t even consider that the contractors are relying and bidding based on a perpetual flow of pre-trained job candidates coming out of those cuts or out of failing companies and the military (trained with tax money). The Tweeners and Millennials were exploited with easily obtained college debt, but pushed to the bleeding edge of technology classes (or marketing and graphic design), not toward ‘repairing’ old systems or crosstraining between hardware and software (until the iPhone enslaved them).

Nobody invests in the future of resources anymore. They only invest in direct returns based on extraction. It’s really part of Reaganism: throw a bunch of money at the power base but don’t think too much about moderation, cooperation, standards or evolution of value.

Are we surprised that a world with a million battery interfaces for portable tools and phones isn’t concerned with updating legacy system standards?