Did they teach you that a group of completely rational short-term thinkers can get stuck at a local maximum that's way below the optimum for people who are thinking ahead? Or that irrational behavior can emerge from groups of smart, rational individuals in competition?

Theory aside, here's a thing that doesn't fit into any short-term models I know: Bell Labs. Take a monopoly business with a ton of spare cash, and throw that cash into a well. Build a city full of comfortable middle-class researchers and their families with no need to produce anything of immediate value, and keep it going for decades. Watch them invent a million amazing things that change the world, and then, once they get splintered into a bunch of smaller, short-term focused groups, watch them fade into insignificance.