If you want to see nostalgia at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting. Put a number on nostalgia and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant.
Where it overreaches
Understanding people turns out to be a more urgent task than changing them, and a great deal harder. The textbook treats nostalgia as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. Put a number on nostalgia and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant. Institutions know all this, of course, which is why the second helping is so rarely left to chance.
