"The next one will do it"

"Why does the US spend more on military than every other country?  We could solve world hunger or health care"

 You may have run into this discussion personally, or seen it ad nauseum on political shows, debates, etc

To that I would say "Ok, which country do you want to have the highest military spending: US, China, or Russia?"

The responses usually trickle off from there, but some of the time the lightbulb moment occurs, "oh yeah, there will always be a biggest military spender... there will always be a reserve currency...,_____ will be the industry leader..."

Most importantly- those things won't wait for you to decide which is the most moral/infallible possible version.  Those at the top of industry, government, and emergent technologies know that if they hesitate -for even understandable reasons-  

the next one will do it

Perhaps the biggest cause of this system is the reality of living in a world with long term (multi-generational) cause/effects, but ultimately governed by short and intermediate term interests.

"Why can't we just govern/vote/plan based on long term interests?"

All metrics/incentives are based on short term results:
-House/Senate/even executive re election on 4 year cycles- any promise longer than that scope MUST take a back seat to reelection efforts, otherwise any longer term goal by definition won't happen.
-CEO compensation based on quarterly numbers- industry leaders MUST plug leaking holes, even when they create a larger problem down the road. If they don't, they will be replaced by someone with an immediate leak plugging plan, even if it is inferior in the long term- the next one will do it
-Smaller industry goals based on who can be 1st to market, deliver fastest and cheapest (737 programmers)

If you are presenting a long term goal/plan in any industry, you must present a better cost/timetable than someone presenting a "do it now" approach, and if you or they don't, - the next one will do it



1.US Politics
Trump-
Policy-wise, Trump really hasn't been that far outside of the ordinary as he has sprinted back to the center from his campaign positions, so the biggest "next one will do it" component of his position is the branding/marketing.  Since 2016 as I've said before, the heavy duty twitter/social media campaigning he has done has locked in trajectory for US and world politics (of both parties), where now if you aren't tweeting a response to every single issue/event, then you are left behind by an opposition who is. (of the same or opposite party)  Furthermore, you will be left behind by algo/data in search/ news feeds, etc, and every campaign manager/party knows this, meaning both parties are locked into twitter spamming, even if they realize it will hurt their long term brand. There won't be a long term for them if they don't twitter spam and blast visibility in the short term.

Democrats-
The oversimplification of Bernie et al. offering free stuff in exchange for votes misses out on the trajectory we are looking at. They might be aware (or not, who knows) that if they aren't the one campaigning for everything free, basic income, etc, then the next one will do it.
They might intuitively understand that they are facing a race to the bottom, so there really is no alternative for their platform as long as they are being corralled into the unanimous hand raising positions.  Given that internal competition and trajectory of their party platform, there is no short or intermediate term incentive to not campaign on free stuff, no matter how ineffective it is for them long term.

2.World Politics
Greek Austerity-

There is probably an example of this in every Eurozone country but the Tsipras / Varoufakis saga was so eye-opening a few years ago, and even though Varoufakis is an all in liberal, I still point to several of his quotes on crypto, etc.  When Tsipras was faced with austerity measures to sign for further IMF funding, Varoufakis ultimately resigned/was fired for going against the grain saying "this is mathematically impossible" to repay/ work out.  The short term incentive of immediate funding takes precedence over the long term reality that "running a country this way is mathematically impossible."  Like clockwork, he was replaced with a "the next one will do it" yes man who went along with a repayment plan to further destroy Greece.   

3.US Markets
Fed-
This comes back to the original "biggest military" question. A similar type of person will want to audit/end/abolish the fed!
"what do you want to replace it with?" uhh .. gold? BTC?
Ok, so which country do you want with a central bank controlling the world reserve currency, because they will not all simultaneously agree on gold/BTC- if you end the Fed, the next one will do it.
So do you want a Chinese/Russian Fed? The ECB/IMF negative rate show? Those are the "next ones" ...
TSLAQ-
This is mostly an aside/ highlight of the 'industry leader..' intro, but Elon is a pretty clear example currently and will definitely be in hindsight of literally saying anything to make it from investor call to earnings to call , etc.  In back to back reports he has off the cuff changed the scope of the company from cars to insurance to robotaxis, where a different executive would just stick with their current sinking ship.  He intuitively understands the value of  wildly overpromising to keep momentum, otherwise some competition with less to lose would.  He is "the next one will do it" in comparison to established auto makers who want to test safety and AI longer, and he is rewarded with temporary stock rips.  We shouldn't blame him either, because if he didn't, the company would be dead- He has literally one path so in a game theory sense he is playing correctly.

4.World Markets
There is a lot of overlap between world 'politics' and 'markets' but one current bulletpoint is the trade war production 'shift' from China to surrounding countries.
The main consensus is that most production is still happening/shipping from China but the shipping is being faked from Vietnam/ others to circumvent tariffs.  The main point from the Chinese perspective is that some companies will take on the risk of faking shipping because there is a risk premium there, and if you don't, you risk losing your business to the next one who will do it.  If there is an exploitable corner of a market, ultimately someone will try to squeeze out the last drop of risk premium, and as long as that competition exists, it will force more to compete with that risk/pricing.



There are about another 80 bulletpoints you could put in each of these sections, but at least as a dusting overview I needed to yell on this, it feels completely under reported/discussed the the macro cause/effect politics/market universe we are in. 
Seemingly bad/self destructive decisions are unavoidable because short term incentives can always be marketed by your competition.