> The **tyranny of small decisions** is a phenomenon explored in an essay of the same name, published in 1966 by the American economist Alfred E. Kahn. The article describes a situation in which a number of decisions, individually small and insignificant in size and time perspective, cumulatively result in a larger and significant outcome which is neither optimal nor desired. It is a situation where a series of small, individually rational decisions can negatively change the context of subsequent choices, even to the point where desired alternatives are irreversibly destroyed.
As David Fleming wrote ominously in Lean Logic, "The momentum of small, seemingly harmless choices is powerful and virtually unstoppable, and the final result has to be accepted without a murmur.... Massive, long-term consequences, such as the tearing-down of the trade barriers which have protected a local economy for centuries, come along as unforeseen implications of little decisions about how you and the dog want to spend the afternoon."
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_small_decisions