One of the things that causes many problems in the world is peoples love for short-term thinking.
In business the drive for profits above all else shows itself to be deadly to both workers and to the survival of companies. It leads to irresponsible decisions that destroy the foundation of what enables them to survive.
I can’t tell you the number of times in my life I have seen intelligent, rational people be destroyed by short-term thinking. I think it is the reason why people fall into cults, addiction, and so many things that are unhelpful for them and others.
Part of the attractiveness of short-term thinking is the thought that they solved the problem when they just punted it, and made it someone else’s problem. I hate that people get rewarded for short-term thinking, when it is only destroying everything that is valuable in the world.
It isn’t helpful for society that we are poisoning ourselves, yet short-term thinking did this. Powerful companies ignored the clear science and instead choose profits over ethics. It is clear that we must starve unethical companies by boycotts. This is what I and others are doing, and we speak about the injustices that we see.
We can not survive as a species unless we weigh what happens long term as part of our decision making. I can’t believe that the obvious benefits of the long-term thinking doesn’t cause more people to consider long-term ideas. For example, the national parks are huge tourist attractions and all of that would have been lost unless someone had the foresight to save them.
If we don’t value our resources including our people, we will become Idiocracy in short order. I wrote a few days ago about the 7 million men and that is a resource that is being wasted. We need to give everyone a chance to feel valued and to contribute to their own and others well being. Otherwise our future is too terrible to imagine.