This problem has always bugged me writ large as well. It seems nearly impossible to have any conversation that looks at the bigger picture of things in a complete and nuanced way.

Take for example employment rates. It’s just taken as a given that high employment is the goal. But stop and think about that for a second. In any other part of your life is your goal to completely saturate all time with labor? No, obviously not.

But the goals are set and we must achieve them. More money next quarter than last quarter, it doesn’t matter if every conceivable customer already has a subscription, we must grow. Make the product cheaper to make, charge more, do anything but consider that we might have picked stupid goals.

Agreed with everything you said. I had a class about bio processes and one of them was about production of cheese and during the class both our professor and the scientist that was walking us through the chemistry of cheese making were constantly talking how pasteurization was really good for us all and how annoying it was that it made cheese making more difficult because of the way it messed with casein and other proteins, making it so that the cheese wouldn't "coagulate" correctly (they used a specific term that I cannot remember for the life of me, sorry) but that was all. A protein being bent up a bit doesn't negatively affect the milk of where just drinking it or using it to bake, Ave even for cheese making there are tequiniques to still make it into cheese with pasteurized milk.