Economy featured

Sunk Cost and the Superorganism

By Nate Hagens, originally published by The Great Simplification

December 15, 2025

sunk cost graphic

Recorded on: Dec 4, 2025

Description

In this week’s episode, Nate unpacks the pervasive behavioral pull of sunk cost as a force shaping our material reality, identities, and collective expectations about the future. Past investments – in careers, possessions, and cultural narratives – lock us into patterns of defending what might no longer actually serve us. This tendency becomes more and more relevant as the world shifts in ways that demand adaptability rather than stagnancy. Deep loyalty to former choices, even as we absorb new information about our lived environments, can limit our ability to make wiser, more future-oriented decisions.

By widening the sunk cost lens beyond solely economic terms, Nate reveals how previous, culturally-inherited attachments influence everything from suburban infrastructure to household decision-making. Loosening the grip of sunk cost on our society may require careful pruning of our current lifestyles so that we may regain agency to build up the skills required to flourish in an uncertain future.

Which parts of your own life feel tethered more to past effort than present and future value? How might the built environment around you shape what feels necessary in your life? And, what new “status stories” could be told to help your community transition towards a more resilient future?

Show Notes & Links to Learn More

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The TGS team puts together these brief references and show notes for the learning and convenience of our listeners. However, most of the points made in episodes hold more nuance than one link can address, and we encourage you to dig deeper into any of these topics and come to your own informed conclusions.

01:00 – Sunk cost and sunk cost fallacy

08:38 – Rethinking I-94

09:03 – Reimagining 94 report about boulevard conversion

09:57 – Lagom, sobriété translation, sobriété movement

17:41 – Neocortex, amygdala

Teaser image credit: Author supplied.
Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF). Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians, and systems thinkers, ISEOF assembles roadmaps for understanding how human societies might adapt to lower-throughput lifestyles.

Nate hosts the podcast The Great Simplification, where he has conversations with experts in energy, ecology, government, technology, and the economy to provide a systemic view of the world around us.

After ten years in finance, Nate left Wall Street to study the interrelationships between energy, ecology, and economics—and the implications for human futures. He was the Managing Editor of The Oil Drum, one of the most respected websites for analysis and discussion of global energy supplies and implications of the upcoming energy transition.

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