It's rather stupid to think treating people like so many wheels of a gadget would really get you reliable results. The higher the turnover of employees the more loss of knowledge you have to continuously build up in new hires.

It seems to me the main problem are the numbers: It's easy to prove how much money you have saved the company when you fire people, a 'gain' of ~ 20,000 - XX,000 €/ $/ ... a year.

Easy to communicate and with 3-4 counts of head you reach a 'giddying' 100,000 and so on.

Opposed to that it needs more time and energy to calculate what it ultimately costs to 'just' lose knowledge. And it's much less easy to do.

Markets have been constantly changing, practically since the dawn of time. Like the proverbial 'up and down', they do it, continuously and repeatedly.

To believe you could change that to an always upward pointing line is either madness - or ... 'thinking under the influence'.

Learn from history, watch out for the next 'bear market' - and perhaps tighten belts for a while...