Beyond the myths of broken systems & services

Beyond the Design Industrial Complex

For years, I’ve worked in consequence design — examining how interfaces and technology proliferate our daily lives, and confronting whether things “had to be that way.” But lately, this lens feels insufficient. When entire systems are failing, debating API design feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Don’t get me wrong: accessible interfaces, plain language, and inclusive design matter. But they matter in the context of systems that fundamentally don’t work.

Enter antieconomics

antieconomics started as a thought experiment: What if we measured what actually matters instead of what’s easy to count? But the more I examine our failing systems, the more it feels less like speculation and more like necessity.

Let’s talk about failure. Not the kind that gets packaged into case studies, but the kind that reshapes cities and lives:

Public Systems Crumbling:

• Unemployment systems running on COBOL crash during a pandemic
• Cities lacking basic services like municipal waste management
• Emergency response systems failing during natural disasters
• Public transit tracking showing phantom buses that never arrive
• Healthcare systems requiring fax machines in 2024

Technology “Solving” Problems by Creating New Ones:

• Ride-share apps “disrupting” taxis while decimating public transit funding
• Delivery apps replacing stable jobs with precarious gig work
• Ghost kitchens replacing local restaurants while extracting community wealth
• Rental platforms converting housing stock into short-term stays
• Payment apps replacing cash systems that worked for unbanked people
• Grocery delivery services making local food deserts even worse
• Social media “connecting” people while destroying local news ecosystems

The Hidden Costs:

• Cities building infrastructure for tech companies with public money
• Workers bearing all the risk while platforms take the profit
• Communities losing gathering spaces to optimization algorithms
• Public transit being undermined then declared “inefficient”
• Local businesses cannot compete with venture-subsidized losses
• People needing multiple apps just to access basic services
• Neighborhoods losing walkability to dark stores and fulfillment centers

This isn’t just about broken systems. It’s about how technology reshapes systems to extract value while pushing the real costs onto workers, communities, and public infrastructure. While we debate the finer points of design systems and front-end frameworks, these shifts continue to impact real people in real time.

These aren’t bugs. They’re features of systems designed to measure the wrong things.

The Framework

antieconomics proposes three core truths:

1. Systems Are Stories We Tell
   • COBOL isn’t just old technology — it’s a story about what we choose not to update
   • Lack of municipal services isn’t just oversight — it’s a story about what we choose not to value
   • Invisible money isn’t just economics — it’s a story about power
2. Measurement Is Power
   • What we measure shapes what we value
   • What we ignore reveals what we accept
   • Who decides what to measure decides who benefits
3. Value Is Real
   • Community resilience can’t be quantified but it can be felt
   • Invisible labor holds everything together
   • Human dignity matters more than efficiency

From Theory to Practice

antieconomics isn’t just critique. It’s a framework for understanding how systems fail and what we might do about it.

Instead of GDP, measure:

• How many people can access basic services
• How communities support each other
• How resources actually circulate locally

Instead of efficiency metrics, track:

• Who benefits from “optimization”
• What breaks when systems fail
• Who picks up the pieces

Instead of engagement analytics, examine:

• Who gets left behind
• What communities actually need
• How dignity gets preserved or destroyed

Building New Muscles

To practice antieconomics, we need to develop:

1. System Literacy
   • Reading past official narratives
   • Understanding who benefits from failure
   • Identifying where power actually lives
2. Value Recognition
   • Seeing invisible labor
   • Measuring what matters to communities
   • Understanding real costs
3. Action Frameworks
   • Moving beyond critique
   • Building alternative systems
   • Supporting existing community solutions

Real Talk

Implementing antieconomics means confronting uncomfortable truths:

• Many systems are working exactly as designed
• Failure for some means profit for others
• Better metrics alone won’t fix broken systems
• Change requires more than good design

What Now?

antieconomics isn’t a solution — it’s a tool for understanding what’s broken and imagining what might work instead. It asks:

• What if we measured community resilience instead of growth?
• What if we valued invisible labor instead of invisible transactions?
• What if we optimized for dignity instead of efficiency?
• What if we built systems that actually served people?

These aren’t academic questions. They’re survival questions. Because while we debate design systems and front-end frameworks, real systems are failing real people in real time.

The work starts with seeing clearly. It continues with measuring differently. It succeeds by building alternatively.

An Invitation

This framework is evolving. It has to. The systems we’re examining keep finding new ways to fail. But that’s also why we need new tools for understanding and addressing these failures.

Whether you’re a designer, developer, researcher, or just someone trying to understand why things don’t work like they should — antieconomics offers a way to think about systems beyond their stated purposes and imagined successes.

The question isn’t whether systems will fail. They’re already failing. The question is: What are we going to do about it?

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This is part of an ongoing exploration of systems, measurement, and failure. It builds on work in consequence design and critical system examination. More to come.

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