Attention

Conflict holds attention less than a threat from the other side does. The business did not invent that pull; it counts it, and counting makes it bigger.

A person who reads a long essay at a desk in the morning may want an audiobook on the evening walk and nothing more demanding than a familiar show at midnight. That looks like a change in taste or ambition.

The office was partly a machine for accidents, like the unplanned question or the fix you overhear. Remote work kept the job and dropped many of the accidents, and the people who lose most are the ones still learning.

Your attention is not a commons. It is yours. What a public pays attention to together is a different resource, and it behaves very much like one.