Albert Hirschman — exit takes the complaint with it
Churn is not a number to minimise. It is a diagnosis you already lost, walking out the door without telling you why.
Economist and essayist. *Exit, Voice, and Loyalty* (1970) reframed decline as an information problem: customers and members can leave or complain, and those two responses carry different information.
The move worth stealing. Exit destroys the information that would have told you how to fix the thing. The person who leaves quietly takes their diagnosis with them. So a churn number is not a success metric being optimised — it is evidence you already lost.
Why it bites here. Protocols reward exit with no penalty to the leaver and no signal to the builder. That is the worst possible combination: silence that feels like cleanliness.
Churn is not a number to minimise. It is a diagnosis you already lost, walking out the door without telling you why.