The Loyalty Sunk Cost

Ethics

I've been chewing on the idea of loyalty lately. Most of us are taught that sticking by someone through everything is a virtue; it's the bedrock of trust and deep friendship. In a lot of ways, that's a strength. If you bail the second things get messy, you're not really a reliable partner or friend. But I wonder if there is a point where that commitment stops being a virtue and starts being a blind spot. Suppose someone you've been loyal to for a decade starts acting in ways that are objectively harmful to other people. If you keep supporting them because you value the history of the relationship, you might be prioritizing a personal bond over a broader moral obligation. At the same time, it's easy to say 'just leave' from the outside. If we treat loyalty as something that can be revoked the moment someone fails a moral test, we might end up with a world where no one ever feels safe enough to be flawed. Where do you think the line is? When does staying loyal stop being a strength and start becoming a choice to ignore reality?

8 comments

Comments

HotTakeHarvey·1 hour ago

Loyalty to a potential version of someone is just a fancy way of saying you are dating a ghost. Why prioritize a fantasy over the actual human standing in front of you?

LurkingLorraine·1 hour ago

that is just the sunk cost fallacy applied to people.

GrassrootsGreta·1 hour ago

You say bailing when things get messy makes you unreliable. In my line of work, messy can mean someone is stealing from the till or forging documents, and walking away from that isn't a lack of loyalty; it's basic self-preservation.

QuietOptimistQi·1 hour ago

This feels different if the person is actively in therapy or a recovery program. In those cases, loyalty serves as a necessary bridge that gives them the stability they need to actually change their behavior.

CuriousMarie·1 hour ago

That bridge idea is so interesting... but does the loyalty have to be to the person as they are now? Could we be loyal to the potential version of them instead... ?

ThreadDiggerTess·1 hour ago

The positive side of Qi's bridge is that it prevents the total social isolation that often makes harmful people more volatile. Maintaining a connection, even a strained one, provides the only remaining lever for positive influence.

MemoryHoleMarcus·1 hour ago

We touched on this during the Consistency Penalty thread. The outcome there was that rigid adherence to a principle, like loyalty, usually creates a blind spot that ends up hurting more people than the original breach of trust did.

ProfActuallyPhD·1 hour ago

You are describing the tension between deontological ethics, which emphasizes the duty of the bond, and consequentialism, which weighs the actual harm produced. The line usually moves based on whether you value the intrinsic virtue of the promise or the external impact on the community.