I just wanted to highlight this. The one thing that I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older is how culture beats economics 4 times out of 5.
The number of times I’ve seen stupid economic decisions because of cultural background is way higher than I expected when I was a youth (for example, hourly workers = fungible, so we let we stop paying a needed employee when there’s no work for a month. Then idle the entire floor for 2 months trying to find a replacement).
When I graduated university many years ago, I expected heartless accounting from the MBAs that run companies. What I’ve been appalled at is how often companies suffer economically because management aren’t soulless and instead make stupid decisions because their culture tells them that to do otherwise feels wrong.
Turns out even upper management is made of people.
