Comment by sseagull
2 hours ago
Everyone quotes Goodhart's law, but I think the McNamara fallacy is even more important nowadays. It should be read aloud to every CEO every day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
TLDR: Making a decision based on only qualitative data, and therefore ignoring qualitative information and observations, can lead to bad outcomes. Not everything that is important can be easily measured.
These bad outcomes aren't coming. Maybe we as customers don't like it but it doesn't mean the companies are suffering for it.
For example, McDonald's reported a full-year 2025 net income (profit) of $8.563 billion, an increase from the $8.223 billion reported in 2024.
Spirit of Capital Accumulation be praised!
May 'annual profit' continue to be the only measure that has mattered, does matter, or will ever matter to those that bask in the radiance of perpetual earning growth!
The large multi-national corporation known as "McDonald's" should care about its family, friends, and personal fulfillment instead?
Meaningless.
The correct question is: how much more or less would they make if they were applying some other philosophy?
At least in the context of this conversation.
And, an increase in profit of $340 million across 13,882 stores (in the US) is less impressive.
And presumably that $8.563 billion is McDonalds corporate and the franchisees didn’t see all of that gain.
This is meaningless because it's entirely hypothetical. If McDonald's is only looking at quantitative data the "bad outcome" hasn't come for them. It seems quite successful in fact (especially in these tough economic times). Maybe if leads to a massive failure we can come back and revisit this but for now, based on facts, it's working just fine for them.
People like to believe that enshitifying everything will eventually lead to failure because sucks for us. It does suck for us. But I'm not convinced that karma is coming for them.
> Making a decision based on only qualitative data
I suppose you meant quantitative and it's just a typo