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Why Cleaning Up Is Harder Than It Looks
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| **Bug c103 --- Beginner Introduction**
| Back to :doc:`index`


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The Problem Anyone Can Understand
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Imagine you have a big filing cabinet. Every folder has a label. Every
document inside refers to other documents by their folder labels:
"See the report in Drawer 3, Folder B."

One day you realize Drawer 3 is too full. You split it into two drawers:
Drawer 3A for reports and Drawer 3B for summaries. Good idea. The
drawers are now better organized.

But now every document that said "See Drawer 3, Folder B" is wrong.
Drawer 3 does not exist anymore. Someone following that instruction
finds nothing.

You have two choices:

1. **Go through every document and update every reference.** This works,
   but it takes time. And next time you reorganize, you have to do it
   all over again.

2. **Leave the old references and put a note on Drawer 3A saying "This
   used to be Drawer 3."** This preserves the history, but newcomers who
   don't know about the note get lost.

Neither choice is perfect. Both create work that grows every time you
reorganize. And if you reorganize often --- because the project is
growing and the old structure keeps becoming inadequate --- the work
piles up.

This is what happened to this website. And it turns out that this small
problem is a miniature version of a very big problem.


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The Pattern That Keeps Appearing
====================================

The same thing happens at every scale:

- **A company** reorganizes its departments. Old procedures reference
  departments that no longer exist. New employees cannot follow the old
  procedures.

- **A legal system** reforms its laws. Old court rulings reference
  statutes that have been renumbered. Lawyers must trace through layers
  of amendments.

- **An economy** accumulates debts and obligations over decades. The gap
  between those who understand the system (insiders) and those who are
  new to it (outsiders) grows until the system is effectively closed to
  newcomers.

In every case, the same three things happen:

1. The system was reorganized for good reasons.
2. The reorganization created broken references that accumulate.
3. Newcomers are hurt more than insiders, because insiders know where
   things moved.

And in every case, the same solution is eventually needed: a **clean
break**. A moment where the old system is archived, the new system
starts fresh, and everyone begins from the same starting point.


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What This Has to Do with the World
======================================

This website is part of a project that studies something called the
Jubilee System ([Matheo-4-m]_). The Jubilee System is an ancient idea:
every 50 years, debts are forgiven, land is returned to its original
families, and the economic system resets to a level playing field.

The idea behind the Jubilee System is that structural inequality
accumulates over time --- not because anyone is evil, but because small
advantages compound. The only way to prevent permanent inequality is
periodic structural resets.

What we discovered while building this website is that the same pattern
appears at a tiny scale. Reorganizing our files created a small version
of the same structural inequality: the developer knows where everything
is; a newcomer cannot find anything. The "debt" from broken references
compounds with each reorganization. And the only real solution is a
periodic clean break --- a mini-jubilee.

If a project with a hundred files and one developer already needs
periodic structural resets, how much more does a civilization with
billions of people and millennia of accumulated structure?

**This is not proof.** It is a small-scale observation that matches what
the theory predicts. The theory can be checked by anyone. If the pattern
holds at small scale and large scale, that is worth investigating. If
it does not, say where it breaks. #AuditTheMath