The Navigator, Saturday, February 8, 2025

Swiss cheese failure, falling out of love with relationships, the spare bedroom housing market, climate erasing real estate value, rich moving assets abroad—and more

Trump and his team are working to short-circuit traditional checks and balances by saturating the system with relentless policy moves and controversies. The Swiss Cheese Model of failure prevention developed by psychologist James Reason helps explain how this method works—not through careful consensus-building, as we expect in American democracy, but by overwhelming institutions and exploiting gaps.

This model, widely used in fields like aviation and healthcare, illustrates how disasters occur when multiple layers of defense fail simultaneously. In democratic governance, these layers of defense include Congress, the judiciary, media scrutiny, and public opinion—each with inherent weaknesses or “holes.” Typically, these holes do not align at once, preventing catastrophic failures. However, sometimes, they do. A good example of this is the tragic collision of a Blackhawk helicopter with American Airlines Flight 5342 over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., last week—it shouldn’t have happened, but it did.

Trump’s "shock and awe" approach—rapid and overwhelming policy shifts and proclamations—exploits those weaknesses of the system by pushing through multiple executive orders, legal battles, and media distractions, making it harder for any single layer of oversight to respond effectively. Something is bound to get through.

Thank you, as always, for making us part of your week. We encourage you to join the conversation by sharing your thoughts in the comments below.

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Americans Are Falling Out of Love With Relationships (The Atlantic)

Adults are significantly less likely to be married or to live with a partner than they used to be.

Opinion: Can Characters Come Alive Without People? (The New York Times)

Mr. Azaria has been an actor for nearly 40 years, appearing onstage and in television and film.

Why Americans are moving in with strangers twice their age (Vox)

Spare bedrooms are America’s next housing market.

Can We Resist Better This Time? (Slate)

Actually, it was the wine moms, not the morality purists, who did the most effective work last time. Can we learn from our mistakes?

Climate change could erase $1.4 trillion in real estate value: report (Axios)

A novel new report combining several strands of research finds that human-driven climate change could result in $1.47 trillion in net property value losses from rising insurance costs and shifting consumer demand.

The Rich Are Moving Assets Abroad. What’s Prompting the Shift. (Barron’s)

Some wealthy Americans are motivated by the changing political landscape under President Donald Trump, or they want to protect their assets if the U.S. economy weakens.

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days (The Atlantic)

He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.

Opinion: The end of insurance: Climate change is destroying homeowners and insurers (MarketWatch)

Traditional insurance models aren’t able to handle escalating natural disaster risks

The D.C. Neighborhood Bearing the Brunt of Government Job Cuts (The Wall Street Journal)

In the Capitol Hill enclave, text chains once filled with football banter now focus on layoffs, lockouts and buyouts—and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency

Super Bowl Ads Try to Dodge Culture’s Multiplying Hot Buttons. (The Wall Street Journal)

Artificial intelligence and GLP-1 weight-loss shots are getting commercials alongside traditional Super Bowl fare like fast food and beer.

Old Prisons Are Being Converted Into Stylish Apartments (Really) (The New York Times)

The number of incarcerated people nationwide has declined, and almost 200 correctional facilities have closed in the past 20 years. The sites are being repurposed.

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