The Architecture of Decline: Why Short-Term Thinking Destroys

Politics operates in four-year cycles — the length of a governing term. As a result, the focus shifts toward short-term successes and image management, aimed at re-election or the next career step. A vision for the next forty years is often absent, because the benefits of long-term policy only become visible when current leaders have already disappeared from the stage.

This short-sightedness is partly reinforced by citizens themselves. Voters often vote from immediate self-interest: the over-fifty voter for short-term pension security, the affluent voter for immediate tax advantages. Only rarely do people vote with the world their grandchildren will live in in mind. The result is an accumulation of crises that are systematically pushed onto future generations. Our children inherit a housing market that has become unaffordable due to decades of policy failures, and a fragile European cohesion caused by a lack of social unity and a consistent long-term vision on migration.

This culture of depletion continues in the corporate world and on the work floor. Here too, the short term dominates: quarterly results and efficiency outweigh human biology. Consider an employee who indicates they want to work closer to home. When a workday including commute rises to ten hours, the phenomenon of the "active couch potato" emerges: even if someone exercises in the evening, it does not compensate for the damage caused by eight hours of physical inactivity. Metabolism slows and blood vessels remain under static strain for long periods. At the same time, organizations claim to pursue sustainability.

When a manager then offers a standing desk as a solution to physical exhaustion, this is symptom management. It is a cheap bandage that creates the illusion of care, while the real cause — a structurally unhealthy combination of long commute times and chronic inactivity — remains untouched. Two hours of commuting on top of a workday increases cortisol levels and removes time that is essential for high-quality rest.

We treat ourselves and our children as production assets in a system designed for immediate profit, while the biological and societal costs are pushed into the future.