On a related note, I prefer seed and venture stage companies to be a bit underfunded, they seem more creative than folks who go the full WeWork with the team-building t-shirts or Solyndra with the robots which played "Whistle while you work" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
From Of Two Minds:
An Abundance of Bad Decisions
Fostering illusions of prosperity only further cripples our ability to make the necessary difficult decisions.
Have you ever noticed that the decisions made in times of abundance are generally bad? Bad might be too weak a word; catastrophically bad might be more accurate. This causal connection between abundance and flawed decision-making was one of the many stimulating ideas that came up during an afternoon with Aengus Anderson, host of the excellent audio program series The Conversation.
This dynamic has two sources:
1. There is no pressure in eras of abundance to make difficult choices. Since everything is going so swimmingly, "more of the same" is what everyone wants. After all, why risk upsetting the gravy train?
2. This pressure to maintain the Status Quo whittles down the options even being discussed to politically safe pseudo-reforms. Any ideas that are outside the more of the SAME box are dismissed or marginalized. (SAME: Socially acceptable middling effort--a telling acronym I found in the work of Michael O. Church.)
As a result of this paring away of all bold, daring ideas and solutions, the Status Quo toolbox is devoid of authentic solutions when the bad decisions finally catch up and the era of abundance devolves into scarcity.
This reliance on more of the SAME pseudo-reforms to address emerging crises leads to a policy of doing more of what has failed spectacularly and Going Through the Motions of reform to placate critics.
This dearth of concepts and policies that actually address the unfolding crises creates the phase-shift escalation of crisis and failed reform depicted in this chart:
Both the Power Elites and the general populace have been crippled by abundance: since no one has been forced to make difficult decisions for so long, the leadership and the public have both lost the ability and will to make demanding analyses and choices.
Since there are no tools left in the policy tool box and no ability to fashion new tools, the Status Quo figuratively tries to pound down nails with a screwdriver. Of course they fail, and fail spectacularly; they don't have the right tools. All they have is socially and politically acceptable pseudo-reforms and simulacra big ideas. ....
....MORE
This piece was posted by Mr. Smith in 2013 but it seems as fresh now as the day it was written.
