There is a concept in/around civil engineering I've heard referred to as the 3 generation rule, though the only place search engines seem to turn it up is Ken B

There is a concept in/around civil engineering I've heard referred to as the 3 generation rule, though the only place search engines seem to turn it up is Ken Burnside's formulation on Atomic Rockets, which specifically applies it to space stations. >The Three Generation Rule of Space Colonies states that space colonies have an average life-span of three generations until the life-support and other technical system decay to a point where the colony cannot sustain life. As Rick Robinson puts it "the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to survive indefinitely is beyond the capability of "normal" human societies. The human tendency to favor short-term expediency. will, over time, make the habitat ecosystem more and more precarious." See the link for more details. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/glossary.php http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/glossary.php Here's the thing, that didn't come out of nowhere. There're actually earlier references I've stumbled across from various veins of engineer or policymaker with regards to how difficult it is to get funding for proper maintenance of civil engineering projects. The meme formulation of hard times, strong people, yada yada, is a glib restatement of a rule that to me seems to be at the very heart of information theory: If you ain't lived it, you don't get it. I can tell you stories til I am blue in the face, but until people [start dropping dead from cholera in the streets], [get trapped in elevators due to widespread power failure], [start suffocating in the mal-maintained subway tunnels], [having their homes blow up because of long deferred natural gas pipe maintenance], you will not give me the resources to get done what needs to get done. To generation n-1 it's theory, generation n-2, they paid for it in blood, to generation n, it's the crazy ramblings of old people and the world don't work that way anymore grampa. Except it do. And it will continue to. This the cycle continues. Even the creation of an ennui consumed generation is predicted in the sense that a generation sees the problems, but isn't in touch with history enough to figure out how far to roll back thinking to safely start retraversing a new path. You either get an extremely luck person who stumbled on it randomly, or you get hard times when the next demagogue wrecking ball's shit and everyone has to figure out how to pick up the pieces.