Plumbers and other similar tradespeople gain an interesting perspective into the inner workings of households, businesses and institutions, inner workings that are often shielded from view not only metaphorically but literally with burying, laying down concrete, running piping in walls and away from sight, and so on.
What happens in those places is easy enough to summarize: there is a general hollowing out of equity and resource bases, which is covered up socially with various forms of artifice to maintain the illusion of continuity. Where contradictions in narrative and resource do erupt, we see brushfires of bickering and conflict over who owns what and who is obliged to do what.
We could go on and on about those things, and I do address them quite often here. But we can probably get at the spirit of what is happening by just looking at the plumbing itself, and the profession which charges itself with maintaining it.
Shielded from view in this case due to trade specialization and then literal physical concealment, we have the deep intricacies of modern plumbing technologies and techniques, which are in the course of disintegration, a fact that is owed to changing economic conditions and social/pedagogical changes in the greater culture.
As with many other problems today, we have a self-reinforcing one. If you want your plumbing to do certain things, such as to exist within modern buildings without leaking, and for toilets to flush a certain way, and for showers and sinks to work a certain way - which are all expectations which have been conditioned over time to establish universal standards in domestic, institutional, and commercial comfort - you have to rely on certain well-established technologies like copper piping, ABS piping, acetylene torches, sealing glues, saws and pipe cutters, and all of the rest.
These technologies all behave a certain way, especially since they need to transport water, gas, and waste every which way indefinitely. The slightest imperfection in a copper pipe soldering - which is required to bind them together without leaking - such as a bur on an improperly cut and reamed pipe end can produce turbulence in moving water that over several years, punches holes in the pipe and leads to leaking, which can completely destroy the many layers of a built structure, which can be very expensive, stressful, disruptive, and basically disastrous.
Let's think about it briefly: a simple leak can produce mold and rot in wood frame, destroy drywall, weaken floors, short out electrical wiring and components, and compromise the functionality of the plumbing itself to boot. All of the building elements connected to this sphere of dysfunction must be torn out and replaced, and this is a sphere that grows in sophistication and cost the more luxuries and functions are incorporated into it.
To keep problems like these from happening, plumbers must have an incredibly deep knowledge of these technologies and have the appropriate techniques to apply them correctly for longevity and reliability, which is less and less to be seen in the trade as a whole. Add to this dynamic the constant introduction into the market of newer technological expediences which make the job easier but which don't typically produce longevity or reliability.
If we look at the plumbing trade, we see a recourse to mind-numbing and authoritarian courses stressing proper code and procedure. The knowledge is there, but there must be humans capable of learning it. And the humans in this case are shuffled through underfunded classes and then tossed into exploitative commercial endeavors which forgo further training and instruction, and which emphasize short term constructions which satisfy some sort of agreed upon warranty of service.
In other words, no one is being taught a holistic trade craft. They learn to scratch by and get some sort of certification, and/or work under some exploitative regime and do the bare minimum to finish a job, after which any further complications can be plausibly denied and brushed off in court. So at a very fine level, none of this plumbing is built to last, and plumbers themselves are not built to last as long term tradespeople.
Countless flaws in construction are built and concealed under layer upon layer, and with this process happening on a systematic level, one flaw in plumbing may exacerbate another flaw in electrical work and vice versa, which leads to catastrophic damages further in the future, adding to the unlucky party's buildup of private debt. And so this process continues, and like the hidden flaw in the pipe that produces a turbulence which eats away at piping, we see a gradual eating away at the resource base, even as it materially expands, until the disruptions are great enough to produce a crisis.
To put it in the abstract, we have a constantly growing and transforming built environment that must be constantly cared for in a highly technical and resource intensive fashion. Whatever is contrived for our comfort must be maintained and reproduced for our comfort, and when something goes wrong in this sphere it will not heal itself: it must be fixed with the same technical knowledge and resources that produced it.
Compare this to a natural environment which is constantly caring for and healing itself. This is a caring and healing which proceeds to a holistic continuity, with less of a care given to constituents outside of their participation to maintain the whole and so a given living thing in this system must resort to some manner of a manipulated and built environment to persist. But as always a balance must be struck, and we've chosen to build, build, and build some more.
