The usual story is that we are careless calculators. The better story is that we are careful about the wrong things. The textbook treats effort as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. There is a version of this essay that ends with a policy prescription. This is not that version; the mechanism is interesting enough on its own. Economists have spent decades modelling effort as a quantity. It behaves more like a weather system.
What it gets right
What looks like effort from the outside is usually something simpler from the inside: tiredness, a deadline, a wish not to look foolish. The mind that evolved for small groups and immediate dangers is now asked to manage a pension. It does its best. Understanding people turns out to be a more urgent task than changing them, and a great deal harder. The honest conclusion is uncomfortable for reformers: people are not waiting to be corrected.
