Some of the ways to achieve goal X are via layoffs, some aren't. You cut some possible routes to X, but you add more routes.
Not all routes are equal. Cutting a particular employee might mean that a vital convergent point is no longer possible to enter, meaning all routes now lead to failure.
Some of the optimal routes to X may require that management get paid a fair wage (rather than 40+ times the median), and that they reconfigure the company to enable them to keep all employees - everyone gets hours cut by half-a-day, say.
TL;DR - in short you're committing petitio principii, assuming the best way is layoffs, and thus concluding the best way can't be taken without layoffs.
Not at all. The only observation I'm making is that {ways without layoffs} ⊆ {ways without layoffs} U {ways with layoffs}. Everything you can do in a universe where layoffs are outlawed you can also do in a universe where they aren't. The difference is that in the former universe you have less options, and therefore less paths to success. None of that means or implies that layoffs are always the "best" option.
It's not necessary that the number of actual paths available is reduced by the imposition of "no layoffs", it can actually be increased. It seems counter logical. A restriction can lead to greater innovation that is stimulated by the restriction, there were I'd warrant far more places to get an alcoholic drink under prohibition than prior to its institution.
>you have less options, and therefore less paths to success //
A priori it seems right, but the successful paths aren't randomly distributed; perhaps there is a key employee who leaves under layoffs and the business fails (another business succeeding).
You can apply basic set theory to chaotic and complex psycho-temporal interactions.
But I agree, as I think you surmise, that we can't simplistically mathematically impute the "best" route will be with(|out) layoffs.
Some of the ways to achieve goal X are via layoffs, some aren't. You cut some possible routes to X, but you add more routes.
Not all routes are equal. Cutting a particular employee might mean that a vital convergent point is no longer possible to enter, meaning all routes now lead to failure.
Some of the optimal routes to X may require that management get paid a fair wage (rather than 40+ times the median), and that they reconfigure the company to enable them to keep all employees - everyone gets hours cut by half-a-day, say.
TL;DR - in short you're committing petitio principii, assuming the best way is layoffs, and thus concluding the best way can't be taken without layoffs.