Be Good

Peter Drucker said much the same thing: profit is the cost of doing business, not the purpose. The true purpose of a business is to provide goods & services to its customers. The "profit motive" is essentially a check on the resources consumed by the business, to ensure that it's not spending resources inefficiently, much as PG mentions in the 2nd footnote.

Up until the 1970s, it was common for corporations to be managed "to balance the interests of all stakeholders - employees, customers, shareholders, and the community." You can blame Milton Friedman for changing that: he popularized the notion of a corporation existing purely to maximize shareholder value, enshrining it so deeply in American culture that it's become law, and corporate directors can now be sued if they consider anything other than the interests of shareholders. It is important that companies pay attention to shareholder value, but it was a huge mistake to make that the only mission of a corporation. Score one for market fundamentalism...

Since when is porn evil?

Lisp speaks active voice.

i modded you up, because you brought value to the conversation. i don't think i agree with you though, or at least you haven't presented enough information to convince me. being concerned with customer satisfaction does not preclude the company from trying to keep prices artificially high.

"And the very best hackers tend to be idealistic. They're not desperate for a job. They can work wherever they want."

I've heard PG repeat this but I think it's fallacious. A lot of up-and-coming hackers can't pick and choose where to work except in the sense that any person can quit one job and apply for another one. They can't unilaterally get themselves into Google, for example.

Established hackers also may have constraints, such as time and family commitments, that keep them working a stable job instead of a startup, or keep them where they are rather than uprooting to go work at e.g. Google for a lower standard of living (possibly less salary and almost certainly higher cost-of-living, if you work at the HQ) even if they'd prefer to work there.

Or your company may fold and you may have trouble finding an awesome job right away and have to settle for a tolerable one instead. Considering that so many start-up founders live hand to mouth, they are quite likely to be "desperate for a job" at various points, or at least unable to work "wherever they want".

They might also find that the startup they want to do is just not as profitable or likely to succeed as some other one, and end up working on the other one instead. Scratching your own itch does not necessarily coincide with "making something people want" on a commercial scale.