“In the long run, we are all dead.” — J. M. Keynes
Everyone who studies economics more or less seriously comes up against the need to understand the difference between the long run and the short run.
The simplest example: producers’ ability to change the quantity they supply is negligible in the short run and more realistic over the “long haul” :).
In practice, unfortunately, most people consider only the short run, and because of that they often make the wrong decisions.
For example, some business owners, analyzing their sales and foreseeing a loss on the current deal because the buyer wants to return the goods, refuse him. Yes, they save a few dollars, since they don’t have to return the goods to the wholesaler and they don’t pay for shipping; that’s the short run. But if we look at the situation from, figuratively speaking, ten steps back, we see that by fearing a loss now, we have probably lost a customer, which in the long run means lost income for us. And if we also drag in the calculation of a customer’s “lifetime value”, that is, the amount the average member of your target audience spends on your goods, or goods like them, over a whole lifetime, we see how utterly irrational this behavior is.
Beyond customer relations, the concept of the long run is useful to apply in many other areas, and I think it would make our lives a little better. After all, when you look at any relationship in terms of the long run, you somehow come closer to the banal “golden rule” of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you…