It's true. And it's not limited to employees. A local small business died late last year. It was owned by 1 person and, regardless of the market, they bear the blame for the failure. They're a personal friend of mine. And, in my opinion, the failure was from bull-headed stubbornness and an inability to cut one's losses and/or adapt to a changing market. This owner was just as guilty of myopia as an employee who puts on blinders and let's the boss deal with it.
Similarly, I know several people who loaned that business money. None of the lenders has good insight into the failure. But at least 1 of those lenders feels like the owner was "immoral" and used the loan money to "pay off personal debt", effectively stealing money from those "friends" who tried to "save the business". This lender is just as ignorant as everyone else about what happened. They just assume the worst. That lender is just as guilty of myopia as the owner and the employees who stuck it out till the end. (My attempts to argue with this lender consisted mostly of Hanlon's Razor.) While I like the idea that it's self-absorption (or stubbornness or whatever) that is _a_ fundamental, there's also a significant contribution from sheer exhaustion. This business miraculously survived COVID, only to fail last year. But deeper, more complex, market dynamics were at play. And when one is working, like, 60 hours a week just to make ends meet, it's difficult to find the energy to think deeply about what complex actions you can take to meet the complex market. This myopia seems to scale. And that implies something systemic ... or Malthusian. The incentive structure facilitates myopia. On 3/6/25 6:49 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Glen writes: < Even if you think the End is greater than the Means and evil people like Trump can accidentally do good, you have to remember, especially in a forum like this populated by people who claim to think about complexity, there are unintended consequences of every action. > Looking at the polling of Trump’s address to Congress, it seems like many Americans don’t really grasp the concept of the economy as a complex system, or even that the economy is complicated. “Heading in the right direction” means that their frustrations are given lip service. After having different employers that have experienced various stressors, one thing that is notable to me is how many employees really do believe and depend-on the simplified arrangement that is presented to them. Many don’t think about whether the business/organization is viable or care if their employers are being transparent. They don’t want to be presented with anxiety-creating information. They just want their paycheck. Even as the business is teetering on a knifes edge, they will come to work and leave it to the boss to sort things out. Meanwhile to make their organizations work, e.g., to make businesses profitable, employers are forced to get the most bang for the buck. That means recruiting the best (or cheapest) people, and it means controlling costs by using global supply chains. I don’t mean this to sound like an anti-labor perspective. I just wonder if a lack of curiosity about the world, and significant self-absorption, is at the root of it.
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