The point is not that people are foolish. The point is that certainty is expensive, and we economise on it like everything else. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the commute, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance. 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 ordinary case
None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting. Understanding people turns out to be a more urgent task than changing them, and a great deal harder. The textbook treats certainty as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. The strange thing about the commute is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people.
