Why The Fix Is Known — And Still Not Chosen
The Invisible Wall
By the time most people reach this point, the question feels obvious.
If the risks are visible,
if the failure modes are understood,
if the incentives are misaligned but not mysterious,
then why doesn’t anything change?
The uncomfortable answer is this:
the fix is not missing.
It is simply not chosen.
The Myth of Ignorance
We often assume systems persist because decision-makers don’t understand them.
That assumption is comforting. It implies that insight alone could unlock change.
But in most operational systems, that isn’t true.
The mechanics are understood.
The trade-offs are named privately.
The technical debt is visible to those closest to it.
What’s absent is not awareness — it’s incentive alignment.
When Knowing Isn’t Enough
Most of the improvements that would stabilize the system are well known:
more accurate categorization instead of compressed averages
ranges instead of point estimates
capacity buffers instead of perpetual stretch
resilience designed into the system instead of extracted from people
None of this is exotic.
What is expensive is who pays for it — and when.
These fixes demand:
upfront cost
organizational humility
time horizons longer than most tenures
acceptance of lower short-term flexibility
They require someone to absorb pain now so that others can benefit later.
That is rarely how power is structured.
The Asymmetry That Holds Everything in Place
Today’s system functions because risk is displaced, not resolved.
Providers push variance downstream.
Vendors absorb uncertainty to stay alive.
Operators compensate with judgment and care.
As long as someone else is holding the load, the system appears to work.
Dashboards remain green.
Narratives remain intact.
Replacement remains easier than repair.
From a distance, endurance looks like health.
The Role of Time
Time is the quiet enforcer.
Leaders nearing the end of their tenure can often outrun the consequences of today’s decisions. Investors operating on fixed horizons are rewarded for extracting value before fragility surfaces. Vendors cannot pause to renegotiate the structure that feeds them.
Everyone is behaving rationally.
Just not collectively.
The system rewards those who move fastest — not those who make it last.
Why Change Rarely Comes Voluntarily
Meaningful reform doesn’t usually emerge from consensus or goodwill.
It emerges when the cost of not fixing the system finally exceeds the cost of doing so.
When vendor churn accelerates faster than replacement.
When judgment drains out faster than training can replace it.
When automation amplifies errors instead of smoothing them.
When the system can no longer hide where resilience was coming from.
Until then, the invisible wall holds.
This Is Not Cynicism
This isn’t an argument that people don’t care.
It’s an explanation of why caring isn’t enough.
The barrier isn’t intelligence or morality.
It’s incentive gravity.
Systems move in the direction they are rewarded to move — even when the destination is known to be wrong.
What Naming the Wall Does
Naming this dynamic doesn’t fix it.
But it does something quieter and more important.
It stops mistaking silence for ignorance.
It stops blaming individuals for structural outcomes.
It restores agency to those who understand the system but feel powerless to change it alone.
It reframes frustration as clarity.
And clarity is often the first thing a system needs — long before it is ready to act.
Where This Leaves Us
The fix has never been hidden.
It has simply been larger, slower, and more uncomfortable than the system was willing to choose.
For now.