Institutional prevention of unpredictable disasters

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Translated into Serbo-Croatian, Murphy's law about trouble that never comes alone here in Serbia has been coming to full expression for a long time. A series of severe fractures in various segments of the social fabric naturally provoked thoughts on how to suppress or at least limit these painful accidents. Many of these reflections are focused on the institutional framework of society, i.e. on system as it is called in the popular vocabulary. Much of that thinking has gone astray and in the search for solutions in areas where they cannot be found. Most of the criticisms, including the implied proposals for solutions, were focused on the "system", so the remedy was sought in systemic changes. At the same time, the elementary fact that systemic changes cannot be a cure for a large number of disorders that, due to their unpredictability, neither require nor allow systemic interventions, was ignored.

No society can be completely protected from major disruptions in various parts of its fabric, including those fractures that assume the proportions of disasters. Nor can society proactively anticipate all major troubles that may or even under certain circumstances must befall it. Possible accidents are located on a scale of (un)predictability in a wide range from completely unpredictable to some sufficiently weakly predictable that on a practical level they do not differ much from the first ones.

For example, a tragedy at school"Pond farmer” nor could it be predicted in any way nor can it be the subject of any adjustments that would entail the construction of systemic structures intended to prevent such accidents because they are out of mind and a mentally balanced person cannot treat them as something to be reckoned with in advance. Societies have always had to face calamities whose occurrence could not even be foreseen.

There are also fractures for which a priori, with enormous uncertainty and very wide statistical confidence intervals, a certain probability of occurrence can be determined. However, in many cases, these probabilities are so small and indicated with such pronounced uncertainty that they do not always justify serious and extensive actions aimed at building protective system structures. Because the construction of those mechanisms is not free, so the costs of their assembly and then maintenance can be significantly higher than the expected savings achieved by eliminating disasters. A good system is the alpha and omega of successful social development, but it does not follow that every addition to it is rational and socially desirable. In many variants, the gift can turn out to be more expensive than it should be.

It follows that there is a wide range of possible systemic interventions that will not be undertaken simply because they are not cost-effective. When a suitable disaster does occur, the world is stunned and, as is often the case here, looks for causes and remedial interventions where they do not belong. For a problem that occurs on average once every fifty years, which means that it is most likely forgotten over the long decades, it is irrational and unacceptable to build system solutions, since as a rule they continuously generate maintenance costs and such possible interventions become unnecessary and, of course, a harmful waste of resources.

From the point of view of institutional development and corresponding social practice, large, unlikely and hard-to-foresee fractures are ultimately comparable to those that are a matter of force majeure and as such completely unpredictable. Especially since technological development changes a lot, including the risks of disasters and corresponding probabilities, and over time, systemic intervention in the prevention of those disasters can easily prove to be futile and redundant. And the more general conclusion is that it was unfounded and inexpedient to insist so much on systemic failures and the need for significant institutional reform as a form of struggle against the accident that happened in "Ribnikar" and other major accidents and damages.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO THE FIGHTING STRATEGY AGAINST POORLY PREDICTABLE TRAGEDIES

The alternative imposes itself: instead of being inspired by the widely derived peculiarities of specific cases of social disasters, that alternative should be set up in such a way that it serves to simultaneously and at one cost, as it were, suppress, that is, significantly reduce the probability as wide as possible, of a maximally wide group of different shape such catastrophic disturbances.

Those "flies" of social breakdowns, which are so complicated, and in their totality are still numerous, should be limited, that is, eliminated by a policy that removes them all at once or visibly reduces their probability. What is needed, therefore, is a policy that will act like that plastic and elastic spatula, which in the north of Bačka is called mess, which makes it possible to kill several flies with one blow. Such a general policy that simultaneously removes and dilutes a wide scale of potential social tragedies is the one that would be on the line of maximal reaffirmation of the rule of law in this fateless country.

Perhaps the shortest possible reminder of the ineffable importance of the rules that regulate the functioning of the social community is appropriate here. An organized and efficient society is unthinkable without well-conceived and carefully designed rules that enable the smooth functioning of all its segments and, just as importantly, coordination between them. And that means a serious and effective effort to finally establish the rule of law in this fateless country. Providing certainty of the conditions under which social processes take place, rules open wide spaces for the mobilization of social resources and for the coordination of activities through which these resources are allocated and used.

Even more important than the character and mutual compatibility of the rules is their general and generally consistent application, equal for everyone and biased towards no one. The rules are a condition for the formation of a developmentally propulsive long-term strategy, while appropriate rationality at the micro level is ensured through coordination. This conformity of behavior and decisions enables and conditions economic and social actors, knowing that they consistently follow the same rules svi actors, are informed about what kind of decisions they make. By adjusting according to their decisions, each actor ensures high work efficiency, enabling other actors in the system to achieve the same normatively desirable effect.

As is often the case, the recommendation for a certain turn in public policy is logically firmly grounded in the appropriate diagnosis. The plea for the final (re)affirmation of the rule of law is implied by the diagnosis that this country is extremely neglected and sadly unsuccessful precisely in that civilization-defining dimension. It is only sufficient to add that the local government, especially the highest one, which occupied the state, instrumentalized it in the function of its particular interests and uses it as an owner whenever and however it sees fit, is responsible for this epochal civilizational retrograde.

MANIFESTATIONS OF FOOLISHNESS IN THE COUNTRY BECAUSE OF NUMEROUS DISASTERS

Recklessness implies ignoring the rules and their selective, interest-driven application. The occurrence and frequency of disasters is directly related to the attitude towards the rules and their application. It is a vast and unfathomable area where the application of rules is a crucial prerequisite for the correct performance of work and the successful use of available resources. For example, the rules regulate the way and control of the construction of various buildings with the disastrous risks of disasters that can follow during and as a result of their bypass. Some rules regulate the conditions and the way minors can (not) access firearms, and ignoring those rules can lead to the tragic loss of a large number of human lives.

Our media is full of reports about violations of the law in probably all important areas of life. It was recently reported that an activist, a participant in the recent protests, was taken to the police, and that the prosecution is holding him in custody beyond the limit defined by the current law; what can be said about a country where even the prosecutor's office, an institution that should take care of the implementation and observance of the law same breaks the law in such a drastic way? What to say about the theft of elections and the complicity of the ministry responsible for the implementation of the law and sanctions against violators?

The law limits the time that managers of certain organizations can spend in the status of acting, and in our country there are thousands of cases of double and triple exceeding of that term. The media reported that thousands of projects were launched without appropriate, legally prescribed decisions that condition the start of implementation. It also reports on thousands of buildings put into use without a use permit. Among them, there are those who have been operating without this license for almost a decade, and most of them are owned and used by the state, the guardian of legality as implied by the normative solutions in the corresponding acts.

The most interesting and, in a way, the most exciting relationship that the state leadership has been showing to the laws for years and without the expected escape. According to reliable indications, he is the main perpetrator when it comes to breaking the law. And that's not only because he fails to enforce compliance with the law on all business entities and other actors, with quite natural sanctions for violators, but - even worse - because he breaks the laws himself and in this respect appears to be some luminary.

Ignoring the law is not only a source but also a form of chaos; due to the lack of coordination, it greatly reduces the social product below the available technological and resource possibilities, and in the phase of distribution of such a reduced product, it generates drastic injustices - painful enough to be easily recognized in broad layers of society and among people who do not have a clear and unambiguous definition of justice. Ignoring the law also acts as a strong factor in increasing the number and scale of disasters because it leads to the neglect of an incalculable number of lower-level regulations, among which are primarily those that define safety measures and ensure safety at the social level. This idea reveals a trace of a policy that, without special system arrangements but with the imperative of strict respect for those already existing, would minimize the frequency of disasters in every society.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF DISASTER PREVENTION THROUGH SYSTEMIC INTERVENTION

Referring to systemic defects as the cause of disasters and advocating some sort of systemic adjustments as a strategy to combat disasters was wrong. Such criticisms and appeals for the realization of appropriate changes came from different sides, from the ranks of the opposition perhaps more than from other social circles. The reason has been repeatedly implied in the previous considerations, and it can be formulated quite succinctly here: systemic changes cannot be an effective tool in suppressing disasters simply because they cannot be limited in that way, neither in number nor in scope.

Social efforts in the fight against disasters should be directed not towards new systemic solutions, i.e. towards the production of new regulations, but primarily towards the consistent and strict application of existing regulations, which are basically neither scarce nor poorly tailored. The diagnosis of generators of non-standard catastrophic events should follow that line. An important determinant of the most often unpredictable fatal fractures is the irresponsibly relaxed attitude towards the current regulations and the absence of sanctions even in cases where the perpetrators and the form of the offense are easily identifiable.

The fundamental cause is the absence of the rule of law, which is the circumvention and marginalization of the importance and effect of the law, and on that basis, and because of that, an insufficiently responsible attitude towards the sea of ​​lower-level regulations. These are regulations that regulate the widest imaginable set of social activities, including construction norms and standards whose purpose is to prevent the fall of various canopies densely scattered throughout the country.

The direction and path of social action can be discerned clearly enough: to civilize this society by bringing a more familiar law, which means (re)affirming the rule of law, which would restore a serious and responsible attitude towards all valid regulations, with a wide range of sanctions for their violation.

The roots of the ignorant and irresponsible attitude towards the rule of law are easy to recognize. The biggest offender is the one responsible for establishing and maintaining legality in all spheres of social life, namely the state and its authorities. At the same time, with the raising of the level of government, its responsibility also increases. The most responsible is the highest and narrowest top of the government, which is the President of the Republic (PR). And not according to the Constitution and legally defined competencies, but because of factual interventions in an incredible number of things that he allowed himself to do. For lack of space, let one detail be given that says it all. Until recently, for years, in addition to being the head of the state, PR was also the head of the ruling party, in fact the only one that holds the keys to political power. In doing so, he flagrantly violated the extremely important Article 115 of the Constitution of Serbia in plain view of all who watched. What can be said about the political arrangement in which PR so drastically violates the Constitution that it swore to during the inaugural ceremony by which it was introduced to that duty? When the highest legal act of the country is violated at the highest level of its government, what can be expected in terms of compliance at the numerous lower levels? However, this is not the only presidential attack on the rule of law. On a daily basis, indeed on an ongoing basis, he breaks a multitude of regulations by intensively engaging in "solving" a sea of ​​minor problems, including those related to Parisians and pickles.

It should be remembered that all those numerous extralegal interventions are covered by the current regulations under the duties and responsibilities of the respective civil servants and that the presidential interventions are actually acts of usurpation of those responsibilities. All of this is clearly inadmissible because PR, intervening outside the law, makes decisions for the consequences of which the official responsible for those cases is responsible. Those in charge are obviously harmed in this way.

Something similar happened during his recent resignation from the presidency of the party. There is no one who is not clear that he has retained the same power and ability in managing the party, and, it seems, the same practice so far. However, with this change at the top of the party, the responsibility was transferred to the cheerleader Miloš Vučević; authority without responsibility is the basis of vicious voluntarism that does not promise anything good for the party or the country.

The final conclusion can be really short. The frequency of various disasters in this country is alarmingly high. Their suppression should be a high social priority. This process should start from the narrowest political top, which has the power to impose a responsible attitude towards regulations on all lower levels of government, and which somehow turned out to be the biggest violator of applicable norms and regulations. The biggest sinner in this matter also has the biggest obligations, on two grounds: on the basis of his high and therefore powerful place in the hierarchy of government, and on the basis of the number and gravity of the offenses he commits on an ongoing basis in this country. Look at your home, angel!

The author is a retired economist and professor