Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by andyjohnson0 » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

aaaxyz wrote: post #181

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #101

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).

I'd argue that they are. They physically split and merge via the creation os subsidiaries and mergers. They shaed and absorb "dna" (people, carrying their culture).

If we ever get to an _Accelerando_-type situation where businesses are spinning-off and merging thousands of times per hour then I'll get worried.

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

#192

Post by vidarh » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #183

dm319 wrote: post #108

Earlier 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

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…

Growth, is however, an emergent property of capitalism by virtue of the competitive model, that is very hard to counter.

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

#193

Post by RivieraKid » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39

RivieraKid wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maximizing profit is a good thing.

In the same way explosion is a good thing, if confined within and channeled by an internal combustion engine. Outside, usually not so much.

Not so much? The profit-driven economic progress over the last century is astonishing.

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

#194

Post by mrkramer » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

Kbelicius wrote: post #111

mrkramer wrote: post #96

The purpose of every living being is to spread and grow. Bacteria, virus, animal, human even universe and unfortunately cancer. Companies are no different. Author's statement reminds me of Agent Smith's statement about humans, virus and cancer. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5foZIKuEWQ&t

> The purpose of every living being is to spread and grow. Bacteria, virus, animal, human even universe and unfortunately cancer. The purpose is to spread their genes and not to spread and grow themselves.

I meant growing your population when speaking about living begins. Author of the article probably implies growing in size (growing your company). Looking at the evolution [1] life evolved from single cells microorganisms to multi cellular complex organisms like for example mammals. Growth is the result of the evolution of those organisms and increased complexity of its parts and the whole system. If a company rapidly grows because of its success and increased complexity of doing business (Organic growth) then good if it is artificially inflated growth then it is bad and such company will collapse sooner or later. Organic growth is the most healthiest one but inorganic growth like acquiring market share by doing mergers and acquisitions can also be a way to grow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

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

#195

Post by rapnie » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #183

dm319 wrote: post #108

Earlier 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

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…

A problem with capitalism may be that it is a very broad category, and that currently we have a particular nasty flavour of it, that deserves its own name (e.g. hypercapitalism?) to avoid the endless discussion & confusion whether its all good and natural, or utterly broken (at least for the common folks participating in it).

It seems to me we had a form of capitalism that flourished (piggy-backed) well on top of democracy, and now it has morphed into a form that thrives best in a plutocracy (where democracies are eventually just Putin-style husks of their former glory).

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

#196

Post by bluetomcat » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

belval wrote: post #134

hh3k0 wrote: post #118

Earlier 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…

It's a never-ending vicious cycle between the strive for more energy- and resource- efficient production of goods, and the dispersion of these efficiency gains through increased consumption and market expansion, both geographically and through new classes of products/services. The "airy" fiat currency together with the impersonal profit-seeking multinational corporations create this fairy-tale illusion of infinite growth, which may look efficient from the perspective of a single company, but isn't when viewed holistically on a global level.

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

#197

Post by redis_mlc » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #6

Do 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…

> Do lifestyle businesses really have the negative connotation that I’ve been told they have?

For VCs they do, as they need 1/20 or 2/20 of their investments to become a unicorn (worth $1+ billion) to get their returns and pay for the losing investments.

In addition, if you aim low, a funded company can outspend you on advertising, staffing, discounts, etc. Whether they get better returns than you is a different issue - I have heard of several bootstrapped companies surviving after VC-funded companies went supernova and spent all their investment without getting more.

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

#198

Post by _qulr » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #140

llarsson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the underlings know their product is intended to be trashed, do you really think they will suffer through the late evenings and weekends of gruelling overtime to patch ugly bugs in production? I don't.

I think programmers in general have an overly optimistic expectation of the lifespan of their works. "The great thing about software," they say, "as opposed to buildings or hammers, is that you can write code once and use it forever," as they ignore the dozens of applications and libraries which did nearly the same thing as the code they are writing.

> I think programmers in general have an overly optimistic expectation of the lifespan of their works.

I think programmers in general have an overly pessimistic expectation of the lifespan of their works. They write temporary, ugly hacks for the sake of expediency, and then 10, 20 years later the whole world is still suffering because of those "temporary" hacks.

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

#199

Post by vidarh » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

A12-B wrote: post #162

Diggsey wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, a transition to a more planned economy is going to be necessary, because individual actors working independently of the needs of others might be a surprisingly good way to allocate resources, but it's not smart enough to be done sustainably.

It doesn't need to be planned. The markets just need to be constrained and regulated. In some extents they can be expanded. E.g. you can force companies to buy and trade quotas for different types of externalities to cover undoing those externalities and let the markets sort out the most efficient way of addressing them.

There is complexity there (you need to ensure there aren't any easily exploitable loopholes), but markets have lots of uses.

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

#200

Post by api » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

Cancer is a concept with context: cellular behavior within a multicellular organism. Companies are not cells in a multicellular organism. They're a totally different thing, and you can't just drop context like that. Context-free reasoning by analogy is horrible.

To illustrate, I'll give a more obviously and dangerously wrong example: humans are cells in the body of humanity, so therefore we should kill weaker and older humans for the same reason the body disposes of senescent cells.

See the problem?

That being said: there are definitely valid social criticisms of the idea that the only purpose of a company is shareholder value for the sake of shareholder value. This is part of why Elon has stated that SpaceX will not go public until they are flying to Mars; SpaceX has a purpose beyond just making money.