Why many people are short-sighted

We like to criticize some people are short-sighted and ignore long-term benefits when making their decisions; however, being short-sighted could be a way to avoid risk. Short term gains in many cases are more likely to be certain than long-term benefits; therefore, when making decisions, long-term benefits should definitely be higher than short-term benefits to compensate its higher risk.

Long-term benefits in many cases are significantly greater than short-term benefits; however, long-term benefits are estimated benefits and expected benefits, people can have different expectations and calculation methods, because of the long time gap, such differences are wider than the differences between people's short-term expected benefits. Therefore, when people are making short-term decisions, they are more likely to make similar decisions when people are making long-term decisions. In addition, a long-term strategy involves more opportunity costs, as when the time period is longer, there are more alternative options available. As people expect there would be a lot more options and better opportunities appearing in the future, people become more likely to choose strategies to gain short-term benefits.

However, why is being short-sighted criticised, especially given long-term strategies have so much risk. This is because having a long-term strategy or goal is an effective and efficient way to use personal resources. As having a long-term strategy aims to use all available personal resources to achieve a long-term goal, the amount of resources to use is greater than the amount of resources to achieve a short-term goal. When more resources are used, due to economies of scale, the average profits are greater than when seeking short-term benefits.