The more complex something is, the more likely that the $0.25 part is to fail at the most critical time and it will bring the entire machine or thing to a complete screeching halt!!!
"For Want of a Nail ..."
That rhyme is over 500 years old.
It's all about Chaos theory, which makes my head hurt: when do small changes in the initial conditions of a system lead to large differences in results? I don't think a civilization qualifies as a chaotic system in a mathematical sense, even if "common sense" suggests otherwise. But if control is sufficiently centralized such that changes in one particle (the dictator) affect every other particle, maybe it can be mathematically chaotic.
PS. This weekend I had to fix a 150 terabyte storage system that shut down when a $0.50 fan failed. I think that's what Wildman was referring to.
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