The modern world is unprecedented in its ability to provide huge amounts of economic leverage to almost everybody. We have a huge amount of resources at our beck and call. We can call upon a large number of virtual servants to fulfill our desires at a moment’s notice, and do so relatively cheaply. We have many levers we can pull, and each one of them can move a lot of stuff. The device you are reading this on is one such lever.

This power has made us incredibly wealthy, but has also given us over to incredible excess. It is too easy today to pull too hard on certain levers, even if they are for good things. It’s also too easy to be deluded into thinking you can always depend on pulling too hard to get what you want or need.

There will come a day when the internet is down, your cell phone doesn’t work, Amazon packages don’t arrive in two days, and there’s no food on the shelves at the grocery store. Pull gently; these are fragile systems.