I'm of the opinion that optimization is a natural enemy of variety and diversity. Our businesses, economy, and more encroachingly, culture, are dictated by the requirement for many to optimize on cost and ROI. As such, we converge on all but a few well established optimized processes we essentially copy and repeat. Occasionally "disruptive" strategies emerge and find a new, better cost/ROI optimization solution.

Variety and diversity on the other hand need to be able to discard cost/ROI focused optimization. They need to be inefficient/"wasteful", they need to take time and more resources because they're new or their fundamental variance that makes them appealing are defined by their very state of being sub-optimal. They need to be able to fail and iterate, not fail and die.

I'm a proponent of optimizing on certain factors like cost, time, space and so forth under certain conditions, but I think we need to stand back as humans and be mindful of processes we seek to optimize and ask if some of them are factors we really want to optimize on. Do we want more square footage so we can cram another person or piece of furniture in or do we want to change our target optimization to include aesthetic appeal, variety, mental health... and so forth. We have our priorities way off as a society, I'd argue, and those priorities are being less of a choice and more of a mandate for many.

Right now we're on a runaway freight train across society to optimize on cost and ignore everything else. This pandemic is sure to expedite that problem with the economic toll its taken. That cost saving/ROI optimization strategy, in our economic system, will "win" most times over other choices. If we are able to relax the financial constraints of many, then we can use that slack to focus on other factors that aren't always cost and profit driven.