If you don’t question default decisions, they become invisible taxes on your business.
In 1700s France.
The government needed money.
So they created the Window Tax:
"Let’s tax houses based on how many windows they have."
More windows = More tax.
So what did people do?
- They bricked them up.
- No light. No air. People got sick.
- New homes were built without windows — just to avoid the tax.
The Window Tax didn’t work.
But they kept it anyway.
For 80 years.
Most companies have their own version of the window tax:
- Supporting a legacy product no one uses
- Sitting in a meeting with no purpose
- Following an inefficient process because "that’s how it’s always been"
Should we blame the window tax?
No.
It wasn’t the tax.
It was that no one asked for 80 years:
"Does this still make sense?"
