Summary: A cross between Dilbert, Dao De Jing and Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents. Large technological and social systems lose track of their original purpose and turn self-serving; they do not function as designed because their creators forgot Le Chatelier's principle and were unaware of various feedback loops. The process of observing the systems changes them. Passive safety is better than active safety; when used mindlessly, safety devices and procedures themselves become safety hazards.

The examples of systems gone bad are great. An enormous hangar designed to house space rockets and protect them from the elements generates its own weather, so it can rain inside it upon the rockets. When the Fermi I experimental breeder reactor experienced partial meltdown, radioactive sodium was drained and a complicated periscope and pincers were lowered into it; it was found that a foreign object blocked the flow of sodium; the object was later identified as a safety device installed at the very last moment and not documented (Perrow also tells this story; Gall is mistaken in calling it an anti-meltdown device: this would've been too cute). A Peruvian railroad replaced its steam locomotives with diesel ones; they discovered after the fact that diesel locomotives lose most of their power at Andean altitudes, unlike steam ones, but instead of going back to steam, the Peruvians used two 3000hp diesel locomotives where one 1300hp steam locomotive sufficed before. The Nile used to flood annually and fertilize the Egyptian fields; Nasser built the Aswan dam, which stopped the flooding; the dam produces electricity, which is used to make artificial fertilizer (J. R. McNeill also tells this story in his environmental history of the twentieth century). The examples of ignored feedback are also nice. The Green Revolution caused third-worlders to go hungry as before - but at much higher population densities. Widespread application of antibiotics caused antibiotic-resistant germs to emerge. On the other hand, Washington D.C.'s international airport has a better-than-average safety record despite its hazardous features: "It was safe because it was bad. It kept pilots alert".

Every engineer could cite many examples of systems gone bad. So could everybody interested in politics. I wonder if politically Gall is a Reaganite; certainly his book made me think of Reagan's famous remark, "My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won." My favorite political example is the agricultural policy of the USA and the EU. The United States Federal Government on the one hand, subsidizes farmers and tries to keep food prices and demand for food high, on the other hand, issues food stamps to poor people because food prices are too high, and on the third hand, combats obesity through the National Institute of Health. The EU countries' governments give out large amounts of aid to poor countries, yet impose high tariffs on agricultural imports from them. Like Stanislaw Lem's King Murdas, they are examples of systems so large that their various parts have minds of their own, sometimes contradicting the minds of other parts.