He added: "So now here we are with people under threat of losing their social housing homes, others left stranded on a work programme which doesn't work for them, people dreading the all-too-real eventuality of losing a disability benefit".
In that eventuality, our material circumstances would have changed.
"The real problem was that we planned for certain eventualities but we discovered a different set of realities," he told the inquiry.
For all his canniness when it came to real estate, it soon became evident that when it came to preparing for one future eventuality, Gottlieb had been extremely shortsighted.
In real life, many of us are able to anticipate potential bad luck by taking out insurance against eventualities like theft or damage to our property.
You cannot avoid that eventuality.
Each eventuality was narrowly avoided.
Klinenberg offers many proposals for dealing with such eventualities, some reasonable (he suggests better funding programs to provide the elderly with caretakers), a few quixotic (he has real hopes for social robots).
That eventuality is far from certain, though.
I had to prepare for every eventuality.
