> its goal isn’t “reducing safety margin”

Sure it is. That's exactly how it achieves the higher profitability. Safety margin costs money. Otherwise known as inefficiency.

Slack in the system is a good thing, not a bad thing. Operating at 95% capacity 24x7 is a horrible idea for society in general. It means you can't "burst mode" for a short period of time during a true emergency.

It's basically ignoring long tail risk to chase near-term profits. It's a whole lot of otherwise smart people optimizing for local maxima while ignoring the big picture. Certainly understandable given our economic and social systems, but still catastrophic in the end one day.

It literally is reducing safety margin(buffers) of a whole distribution system by definition, and it is also being applied in places where it does not fit - like systems that should be resilient to disruption and/or anti-fragile.

I would expect a paid professional in management discipline to be aware of such nuance but alas proven wrong again.