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Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

joanwestenberg.medium.com

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Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#41

Post by TeMPOraL »

quasirandom wrote: post #38
simon_000666 wrote: post #7

I'm not the biggest fan of this analogy. I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones. The problem with cancerous cells is that the body stops recycling them and so then they grow unchecked. Modern companies are more like sk…

In many cases, growth is evidence that you've solved a problem in a way people find compelling. Look at Signal. I think its growth is a really positive development.

That, or they just hired an effecitve "growth hacker".

That metric has been successfully gamed in startup sphere over the past decade.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#42

Post by dgb23 »

simon_000666 wrote: post #7

I'm not the biggest fan of this analogy. I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones. The problem with cancerous cells is that the body stops recycling them and so then they grow unchecked. Modern companies are more like sk…

Sustainability does often not necessitate bullying, exploitation, massive wealth extraction or large economic risks.

Bullying/exploitation is something you are forced to do when you are backed into a corner and there is no way out. Still, fast growing companies and enormously large corporations do it on a regular basis.

Wealth extraction is something you can do when there is enough for everyone. Smaller communities, such as families, small businesses and so on understand this very well. But parasitic behavior is apparently accepted in larger communities as it can hide behind abstract notions of hierarchy and ideology.

Taking large risks is something you can do when you are punching up or when you charter into unknown territory, truly innovate things. Just because a business uses software doesn't make it innovative though.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#43

Post by jariel »

A company is a balance of power between:

Owners, Debtors, Executives, Employees, Customers and Suppliers - and the Externalizations (i.e. governments, regulations, treaties).

The purpose is whatever the owners want it to be, in the context of that balance of power.

Sometimes Execs or Employees have incredible power.

As a supplier to a monopsony like Apple, the 'purpose' may largely be dictated by that relationship.

Company owners tend to want to make money, the do so typically by growing.

To the extent that externalizes are minimized, there's nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes externalizations are unavoidable (i.e. imagine a Starbucks on every corner of every street), ergo, it can't make sense, but it's not always the case.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#44

Post by vidarh »

trestenhortz wrote: post #10

Ugh. This person is kinda suggesting that companies should have some noble higher purpose. Companies are entities for making money for investors and employees and maybe having fun doing it. The irony is this person is suggesting companies should be “changing the world” a la Silicon Valley TV show. The author probably had no idea.

Corporations have charters, and historically a lot of jurisdictions placed a whole lot of limitations on corporate charters, ranging from time limiting them, to holding the corporations to their charter - that is, limiting them to do what they were chartered to do. It has not always been a given that you would just get a charter, because a corporate charter imbues a corporation with rights that affects society that only exists by society deciding to honour them.

So this idea of making demands of corporations to have charters that maintains some balance of public benefit is not at all new (that is not to say that a corporation that primarily focuses on making profit does not provide some benefit, but it's not some sort of automatic given that is enough).

There's a whole movement around the idea of pushing governments to revoke corporate charters that do not benefit the public beyond the immediate economic effects (effectively dismantling the corporations in question). You don't need to agree with them, but it's worth realising that the history of the modern, purely profit-seeking corporation with expansive rights is not a very long one, and not at all the only model of how to deal with corporations.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#45

Post by tinkertamper »

the-dude wrote: post #28
coldtea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones. That objection is already covered in the very title used by HN (" If the purpose of a company is merely growth"). It's also covered extensively in the article. And your counter…

I can assure you there are plenty of people growing well beyond their first 2 decades.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#46

Post by oblio »

the-dude wrote: post #28
coldtea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones. That objection is already covered in the very title used by HN (" If the purpose of a company is merely growth"). It's also covered extensively in the article. And your counter…

I can assure you there are plenty of people growing well beyond their first 2 decades.

As far as I know we don't grow any new fat cells, it's just that the ones we do have get larger.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#47

Post by TeMPOraL »

agumonkey wrote: post #5
sunstone wrote: post #3

To push the metaphor a bit further isn't humanity itself a kind of cancer of the earth?

It may have become, but it wasn't until we figured the physics out.

It was already. We've been a rolling ecological disaster way before we figured out writing. We just went from place to place, leaving burned forests and extinct species behind.

Grokking physics definitely accelerated this, but we have an opportunity ahead of us to stabilize. Not sure we'll be able to take it, though. Not with the systems of incentives that we have now.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#48

Post by kevincox »

RivieraKid wrote: post #27
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes – until you bring the stock market and investors into the picture. Oftentimes, companies will have a legal obligation to their stockholders to (attempt to) maximise profit…

Maximizing profit is a good thing.

Why? The only answer I see is that you make more money. But it is well understood that money doesn't lead to happiness.

What if your company was making enough money that you could pay everyone worked there generous salaries and your customers are happy. If you product is complete I don't see the need to add more. Why not let everyone work half time, and continue to deliver an excellent and focused product. Slowly adding features and integrations only as they make sense.

What we see instead by companies aiming to maximize profit is that they keep adding stuff that no one wants, hiring more people and squeezing every cent out of their customers. Sure, they make more money for a while but if you give me those two options I would much rather work half the hours and pay my employees more with happy customers.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#49

Post by sxg »

lm28469 wrote: post #32
lnsru wrote: post #16

There are 2 states in the forest: growing trees and rotting trees. Nothing in between. So this cancer analogy is a bit absurd. The same with business: business is growing or dying, I am not buying “we don’t want grow” argument.

> The same with business: business is growing or dying I know plenty of people with small businesses that are neither growing nor dying, just paying the bills and making enough money to live happily. I'm kind of scared that people can't even imagine this is a possibility to be honest... Not everything has to be the next facebook and have 100% yoy growth

Maybe those companies don't have net growth, but they still need some sort of growth. Regardless of what industry you're in, every business will face inevitable losses—customers will decide to leave, inflation will occur, equipment will need to be repaired/replaced, etc. Those losses need to be offset by growth.

While net positive growth isn't necessary, it is a major motivator for launching your own business. If you don't have net growth, then you're exchanging both your efforts in working at the business as well as in the day-to-day running of the business in exchange for a relatively fixed income. I'm not sure that the risk involved combined with the income to hours-worked ratio is much more beneficial than just working as an employee with much lower risk and no responsibility to run/manage the business.

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