"There is a lot of ruin in a nation." — Adam Smith This seems to be true of all sorts of large, complicated systems. Smith naturally focused on countries, but

"There is a lot of ruin in a nation." — Adam Smith This seems to be true of all sorts of large, complicated systems. Smith naturally focused on countries, but large organizations like companies and nonprofits can waste resources like this, too. The human body exhibits this behavior, too — imagine how many things that could go wrong with yours that would nevertheless still leave you able to go to work.