Replicators using directed mutation to compete in a free energy medium will inevitably discover uncontrolled replication. Doesn't matter whether its viruses or cells or businesses or memes.
Corporations aren't replicators though (thankfully).
Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
181–190 of 313 posts
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#182I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the cu…
I left a CTO role of a startup for similar reasons. We already had paying customers, and the company was doing OK, but there was always drive to do and more flashier things, rather than double down on helping our customers.
I remember the moment of epiphany when I realised that the company was not in fact working for customers, they were just a marketing sell to be able to attract more investors to grow the company even more.
While I was not naive even back then and knew that its mostly how the world works, I still felt the misalignment of incentives would generally mean I as a person would need to squeeze and disregard some people in order to accomplish the goals of others. Organizational incentives always win in the long run, however well meaning the people of it are. I'd much prefer to work for a client that gets its revenue directly from its customers, as that would mean helping them would help the company too.
I'm very happy that working in IT allows me to be a bit more picky in who I'm working for to enrich, and it was possible for me to leave, and be happy for it.
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#183I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the cu…
There is a growing body of thought that capitalism and, more specifically, continued growth, is unsustainable. A lot of the literature focuses around the environment [1], but we should also think about businesses that perform a useful community service or product to their community - must they always grow? If not, must their competitor? [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197
I think capitalism is being misused in this sentence, and that is making it hard for people to make sense of. Capitalism is simply an economic system where the means of production are privately owned. Growth is not a requirement or even feature of capitalism. Being able to own companies, property and hold currency are all features of capitalism. If you are trying to say "infinite growth is unsustainable" that stands on it's own and is worth discussing.
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#184There 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.
Businesses cannot and need not grow forever. I don’t buy your argument. Stable businesses can and do exist.
Let's take a natural monopoly. Like electric grid. Can these companies really grow forever? At some point they should have build transmission lines to everyone that they can profitably afford to. Then they can either expand to some other field or keep paying 5-20% to their owners as dividends each year...
I don't see later option as bad one. Clearly they can provide service and invest to keep it running or even to optimize it. But growth might be impossible.
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough
That quote always bugged me because it disregards that our economic growth is not really tethered to natural resources. Sure a company like Coca-Cola can only grow so much before it effectively covers the entire planet, but they can still reduce costs to improve their profit margins and displace existing drinks from other companies with a new product. The cloud as a business is mostly about building products that add…
Fiat-denominated economic growth may not be tethered to natural resources, but real economic growth is.
We may well develop technologies that allow us to generate more with less, but there are limits to this.
Yes, Coca-cola may invent a new soda, but that soda will always have some material inputs.
Cloud computing most definitely does not escape this - it relies on massive networks of physical infrastructure that require huge investments of natural resources and human capital to build.
Even the monetization of things that appear at first blush to avoid this issue such as the monetization of human attention do not do so in reality as our mental faculties themselves rely on the continued sustenance of our physical bodies.
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#186Do lifestyle businesses really have the negative connotation that I’ve been told they have? I’ve heard about this stigma of a lifestyle business numerous times, but everyone Ive ever actually talked to has said they sound lovely: you maintain a lot of control over your life and business, at the expense of perhaps more (unnecessary) money. I had thought for a long time that lifestyle businesses which weren’t optimizin…
First, stop calling any business a lifestyle business. Business is always hard no matter how much time you put into it. I run a bootstrapped SAAS bsiness that grew "only" 20% last year. I know that is not even close to what VCs want if I wanted money but that 20% growth was great for our team and we can continue to working on building a great sustainable and profitable business. However, I can assure you there is nothing "lifestyle" about it. As the founder, I grind my ass as much as the founder of a VC backed company.
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#187I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the cu…
Where I work is in the similar boat. Except we're 130 people and still private.
The company recently took a large cash infusion from a venture capital firm. The company said "yadayada you'll see small improvements how we work" - what that translates to is:
1. adding a new C level for sales
2. doubling the sales department
3. Metrics now for new customers is doubled
Our department is suffering. Badly. So are others. Complaints to upper management appear to go on deaf ears, or with ridiculous responses (like: well we saw one of you on your cellphone so you're not really busy).
And when we've asked for direct support for retaining customers (using their sales language), our team was told "just make less mistakes". And unsurprisingly, customers are getting more vocal about substandard service after the sale.
I'm looking elsewhere. Have been since this VC firm acquisition/funding was announced. (VC's are poison in every case I've seen.) But things are getting worse, with no end in sight - and I want out.
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#188I once worked at a company where I didn't understand why they took certain decisions. In the end, it all became very clear. My mindset from "these guys have no idea" shifted towards "wow, they are smart, I didn't get this part". Basically, they were acquiring customers faster than anyone could follow. Our development goal was "fast and opportunistic". As you can expect, the product was full of bugs, and customer supp…
> I once worked at a company where I didn't understand why they took certain decisions. In the end, it all became very clear. My mindset from "these guys have no idea" shifted towards "wow, they are smart, I didn't get this part".
How is this story is relevant to the linked article?
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#189This is a sloppy argument that mixes virtue-signaling, cherry-picks anecdotes, and doesn’t address the core topic: is growth always good?
There are many reasons a company might grow. One is that a company, flush with VC funding, effectively gives away money to buy customers and growth. I’m skeptical that there is enough VC money to buy hockey-stick growth, but if I’m incorrect, then the real issue is, “VC money is poisonous to the free-market,” and not that growth is cancerous.
The other reason for growth is that a startup is making what people want. People might want it so badly that they will put up with buggy and incomplete products — as long as those products fulfill an unmet need.
If what people want is shortsighted (gas guzzling devices?) or just wrong (short selling?), then yes, growth is cancerous. But again, the real issue is “the failure of Governmental regulation against unsafe or unethical products is cancerous.”
The problems identified with growth are not essentially about companies. A company that is growing, given proper private and public regulation, is by definition providing more value to the world.
So in some sense at least, the article is right — there are more important things than growth, if you simply add an adjective: legitimate growth.
Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a growing body of thought that capitalism and, more specifically, continued growth, is unsustainable. A lot of the literature focuses around the environment [1], but we should also think about businesses that perform a useful community service or product to their community - must they always grow? If not, must their competitor? [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197
Continued growth: absolutely. Capitalism itself only exists because resources are finite though. It's the most practical method we have right now for efficiently allocating those resources. Allocating resources is a hard problem to solve. If we had infinite resources we would not need to solve it.
> It's the most practical method we have right now for efficiently allocating those resources.
This is where true why is our way of life less sustainable today than it was 1000 years ago?
Nearly all first nations tribes lived in a way of live that was sustainable indefinitely. In 250 years of developing capitalism we have destroyed most of the biosphere, and trigger climate change that has the potential to undo civilization as we know it.
Capitalism and rapid hydrocarbon extraction has allowed the species to surpass the carrying capacity of the planet in away that cannot possibly be sustained.
Personally, I think this was always our destiny, but to try to delude yourself into believing that capitalism is making things better is a strange form of denial.