I think we need to look at what we really mean when we say someone is loyal. What it means to be loyal is - this is related to the idea of a contract - that whe

I think we need to look at what we really mean when we say someone is loyal. What it means to be loyal is - this is related to the idea of a contract - that when you see a better opportunity, you do not leave your current relationship in favor of the new one. In other words, loyalty is what stops us from taking better opportunities that arise as circumstances change. Same as when you are taking your vows, if you later come across a hotter, younger chick with your exact set if kinks, you do not just drop your wife and go looking for a new gimp suit. Seen from this perspective, it is clear that businesses tend to have very little loyalty. The ethos of most of the business world at the moment is short term bean-counting optimization. If employees can be fired and replaced by cheaper foreign workers, they will be. The only rationale allowable is one that balances costs and benefits, in the bean-counting sense, and it is not an accounting that includes any weight for loyalty. You could imagine a spreadsheet where the company said "hey I'm gonna put a hurdle of $100k per employee on the 'stay in America' side, and I'll only move the factory if it's still in favor of moving abroad". But when has this ever happened? On the other hand, employees probably have more loyalty than zero. Almost everyone has a story about they were approached by a recruiter offering a higher salary, but they didn't take it. Part of this is explicable by risk, offsetting the higher salary with a chance of not settling at the new work, that kind of thing. But if you were to count the bean again, almost every knows a bunch of people who could have jumped ship for a higher salary but didn't, even when you count that risk.