This is why taxes are so high and cost of government are through the roof. Once the greedy unions and corporations get a foothold on a project, regardless of the costs, usefulness and support, they want to give it as much money as possible.
“Consider California’s high-speed rail project. I love the idea of riding to San Francisco on a fast, sleek train. But after years of effort, it seems like this has become a train to nowhere. There are a couple of bridges on the outskirts of Fresno. But no train to San Francisco.
It’s not easy to assess the future of a project like this, when so much has already been invested. The sunk-cost fallacy shows up when people make the following kind of argument. “Since we’ve already got those useless bridges, we must continue. Otherwise, they will remain useless.”
Opinion
That’s not a good argument. The question today is whether it is rational to continue the project. How much will it cost in the future? Will it ever be completed? And what benefit will it bring? It could be rational to continue the project. But that judgment does not depend on the past.”
High-speed rail’s ‘sunk-cost fallacy’ — spending good money on what is not working | Opinion
Andrew Fiala, Fresno Bee/Yahoo, 1/27/24 https://news.yahoo.com/high-speed-rail-sunk-cost-133000119.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
Human beings do not respond rationally to “sunk costs.” We persist in doing what we’ve always done because, well, that’s what we’ve always done. We confuse loyalty with stubbornness. We are reluctant to admit our mistakes. And so, we “throw good money after bad.”
We repair broken-down cars, invest in losing stocks and donate to lost causes. We remain stuck in toxic relationships. And we allow the past to overshadow the future.
The sunk-cost seduction explains why wasteful social projects continue to garner support. It explains why countries wage long wars despite failure and atrocity. And I suspect it explains some of what’s going on with those who can’t seem to quit Donald Trump.
Consider California’s high-speed rail project. I love the idea of riding to San Francisco on a fast, sleek train. But after years of effort, it seems like this has become a train to nowhere. There are a couple of bridges on the outskirts of Fresno. But no train to San Francisco.
It’s not easy to assess the future of a project like this, when so much has already been invested. The sunk-cost fallacy shows up when people make the following kind of argument. “Since we’ve already got those useless bridges, we must continue. Otherwise, they will remain useless.”
Opinion
That’s not a good argument. The question today is whether it is rational to continue the project. How much will it cost in the future? Will it ever be completed? And what benefit will it bring? It could be rational to continue the project. But that judgment does not depend on the past.
Now consider the case of war. The costs of war are much higher than the costs of high-speed rail. These costs are not only economic. They also include the blood and waste of war. At crucial junctions, a country needs to assess whether the wars it is fighting are worth continuing. This assessment ought to be based in the present and the future.
But in war the past looms large. We feel loyalty to those who have lost everything. To call it quits today seems to betray the sacrifice of those who died and bled on the battlefield. It also seems to imply that the moral decisions we made in the past were flawed and that maybe we should not have been fighting in the first place.
And so, we persevere, as the United States did in Afghanistan for 20 years. The sunk-cost problem helps explain why it was so hard to end that war. It is worth considering this problem as we reflect on current wars. The sunk-cost fallacy applies in our thinking about the war in Ukraine, or in Gaza. Can these wars be ended without betraying those who have died in the past?
Now let’s turn to Trump. The Trump loyalists ignore his moral faults, his legal liabilities, the chaos of his presidency, and the fact that he lost the last election. Some Trumpians believe that despite his past failures Trump will prevail and make the country “great again.” Given his past record, this is really a kind of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is often connected to the sunk-cost fallacy. We somehow believe that if we persist, things will work out as planned.
The Trumpians seem unwilling to admit that their Trump loyalty was misplaced in the past. Loyalty becomes weird when wishful thinking, enthusiasm, and nostalgia cloud our judgment. When we lose, we double down. When we make mistakes, we don’t apologize or express regret. We confuse loyalty with stubbornness. We allow the past to infect the future.
The cure for this is critical thinking and self-reflection. Loyalty and tenacity are virtues. But they become vices when we cling to bad decisions. It is not wise to throw good money after bad. You ought to get rid of that old junker and buy a new car.
It is rational to change course when things don’t work. And there is no reason to think that our past decisions were perfect. We should admit past failures and learn from them.
Wisdom requires us to kiss the past good-bye, while keeping an open mind about the future.
