Who Are My Investors? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#261

Post by jjeaff » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 8:35 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #41

jjeaff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between accepting money and goods from Chinese or Russian investors and accepting money from specific bad actors. For example, taking investor money (and thus giving voting rights) from groups like SoftBank (which has a ton of Saudi Royal family money), is a totally different ballgame from say, buying MacBooks that are made in China.

It's more than just MacBooks manufactured by internal migrants in China[1]. You also have many Chinese tech giants with SV offices: what, refuse to rent them RE, or refuse them building permits? How far does this go? [1] https://www.ft.com/content/463b162a-8a3d-11e8-b18d-0181731a0...

Not that far. Again, to reiterate my argument, paying money to Chinese companies is not the same thing as giving them a board seat. For me, the line would be drawn at that. If I rent my offices from then, they don't get any control over my company. If I take a billion dollars from them, then I am beholden to them in a large way. Fubdibg another office space or a different pc maker is not a problem.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#262

Post by Draiken » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

npunt wrote: post #258

Draiken wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see is that there are literally zero incentives for a company to do that. A company is a "being" that only has one purpose: profits. Even if your company does try to stick with a moral compass, because of how capitalism works, every other company will swallow you. I'm not a finance expert, so I always had this question in my mind. Is there any way to avoid that? I can't think of a way to do that without…

It's only a recent notion that profit maximization is a company's sole purpose, and what that means differs a great deal based on whether you're trying to maximize short-term profits vs long-term. The longer term you get, the more you have to consider things that are beyond the scope of immediate profit maximization. Historically there are many examples of companies that have considered their shareholders, employees,…

I agree with pretty much all your points, however you are talking about exceptions.

The rule is still profits first.

I really wish our entire society would change to care about humans and not money but I can't see it ever happening.

People still prefer buying cheap things from China labour because it's convenient. The individuals don't care (or don't care enough) and the companies are a reflection of that. As you said, shareholders are the ones in control of the company but the consumers will determine their decisions.

It doesn't matter that children are sewing your shoe, as long as you buy them for a cheap price. What would happen if a company in that area were to double their price because they're changing suppliers to more humane companies? What would happen to a CEO that presents a graph showing the costs going up and profits going down?

The shareholders will surely fire the CEO and the consumers will be outraged with the price increase and will most likely be switching to a competitor.

My point is that it doesn't matter if a few exceptions do the right thing. The rule is still the same and it will never change. That's capitalism's entire foundation.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#263

Post by lordnacho » Fri, Oct 26, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #227

lordnacho wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reasonable answer to where you draw the line is: when something is no longer compatible with your value system. And if that's not clear, the issue is that you haven't yet spent enough time defining your values. That's the thing to talk about, research, consider, ask advice on, etc. People having a solid, well-tested personal value system is critical to society's function, because that informs how groups of peop…

That's a universal argument against having any morals. I wholly reject your apparent position. It is simply venal, wholly convenient for your own self-enrichment, damn the consequences - it's pretty much evil personified. You're a cog in a machine that runs on human suffering, and you're actively denying your culpability. Yes indeed, we only find out where our line is when we consider problems in isolation. But just…

You're beating a strawman here. I didn't say you can't make any moral judgements. Yeah, read it again.

I'm saying you can't expect people to have a "value system". It's just not a thing that someone other than a specialist would be able to enumerate.

> It is simply venal, wholly convenient for your own self-enrichment, damn the consequences - it's pretty much evil personified.

Well I hope that satisfies you to write. You, of course, had no skin in that game.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#264

Post by ace_of_spades » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

npunt wrote: post #256

ace_of_spades wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your insightful comment! I agree with you on most points but would like to add another aspect to it. While I agree that we have somewhat of a personal responsibility to be moral and do the right thing, the pressures in a market do make it very hard to follow through on our values. If you are refusing someone else is taking the job. Thus, it is also a collective problem and not only an individual. In a p…

Definitely there's a massive misalignment of what has value in markets and what has value in society, because only some roles and industries are positioned to capture the value they create. Many roles, especially those very human roles of caregivers, teachers, etc, tend to be undervalued because their particular effects are either long term or simply unquantifiable. I'm not sure what system or frameworks we need in p…

Thanks for your comment! I didn’t notice the answer so my reply is unfortunately pretty late.

I agree with your last point, there is definetly a marginal value that is “lost” if highly talented people refuse a job. However, a general question is how large this effect is going to be. If we are talking about an “evil” company it might be pretty high because not too many people are interested in working there. If we talk about a company like Apple it’s probably pretty low... So, I agree that there is an individual lever that people can use. People leaving/deinstalling fb in masses is a great example of that.

Still, I think the collective component shouldn’t be neglected as this is the only thing which can solve this problem for good (i.e., everything else will be too slow and inefficient)