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Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

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Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#61

Post by safety1st »

college_physics wrote: post #57
safety1st wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not extreme, but it's somewhat naive. If you want to make the world a better place, there are usually better ways to do so than via a for-profit business. PR stunts aside, a business is where you allocate capital that needs to generate a return. Why overload this concept? Invest your money in a nonprofit or a charity instead. If you want to ride a horse, don't argue with a cow because it isn't a horse. Milk it,…

Au-contraire, I think its naive to think that when such a large fraction of our lives (and economic activity) is built around particular types of for-profit businesses that we can somehow achieve our broader goals without them. We must break that spell. For-profit business are not structured according to some immutable laws of nature. Everything about them is a legal construct and it can be tweaked. Corporate entitie…

Who's this "we" you're referring to that will enact these changes? Is it the shareholders of the companies? That's a no go - they won't go much beyond making token sacrifices for the sake of PR.

Is it the government? The regulators and the executives of the companies they regulate are frequently the same people - they do their time in private enterprise and then they become policymakers for the industry they were working in. The justification for this is that an industry needs to be regulated by people who understand that industry in depth (if you're a programmer - do things go well when all the rules around your work are made by non-programmers?).

Is it the people? Depends on the country you're in frankly. In the US popular opinion doesn't really support heavy-handed corporate regulation. There are some high impact issues like anti-trust where the public is fairly sympathetic to reigning in the biggest bad guys and I think those are good places to put your resources. Again, the best use of those resources is putting them into an organization dedicated to working on that issue. And the more capital you acquire from your business, the more impact you'll have.

My point of view isn't that we should have no corporate governance. But I have the hard-nosed realist view that the wishful thinking of "we" is ineffective. It has a poor track record. I'm saying a better approach is to go make money and then use it to alter the fabric of reality directly. Maybe network with other people who've made their money and convince them to do the same. This is easier than most people realize, I mean it takes a lot of work and time, but it's the type of work that will prepare you to vet organizations and make smart decisions about who can do the most with your contributions anyway.

Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#62

Post by cube2222 »

pelasaco wrote: post #60
cube2222 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually being changed and was discussed here on HN[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33833017

I would be careful with "actually being changed". They pushed it to start on 2024, so there is nothing being changed. They still can rollback it because of the war, because of the economy, because we have to protect our kids, because Hungary doesn't like it, you name it. In another hand, it's a market, as stated in their website, "It is the world's first major carbon market and remains the biggest one."[0], so for su…

Raised prices are an expected result of these changes. You're paying for the emissions and it becomes part of the cost of production, so in effect raises the price.

That's a good thing and helps "green" products compete.

Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#63

Post by pnf »

wiz21c wrote: post #22

One question is missing : "what if we had to pay for our environmental footprint" ? Since so few ask it in a meaningful way, I dare to say it is still, unfortunately, a pretty extreme questions for those it should be asked to.

A business asking this question without a corollary question about how to recoup the cost somehow (e.g., through market access, product positioning, brand value, or subsidies) is shooting themselves in the foot. Additional questions:

Who is computing our environmental footprint? Are our interests aligned? Do our competitors also have to pay it? Is it computed the same for them? What is the penalty if we refuse to pay? Do loopholes exist and will they be exploited by our competition? Do tax programs already exist at a national level that go towards paying this footprint? Does such a cost necessitate operating above certain economies of scale to be in business at all? If we do business internationally, will we pay different costs in different jurisdictions? Is our footprint a net-bad thing or is our product a net-good whose footprint should be subsidized but isn't?

The question is likely one that many business will have to answer (whether they ask it or not) given the regulatory and financial controls being implemented by supranational governance.

Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#64

Post by illys »

CrazyStat wrote: post #53
cube2222 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually being changed and was discussed here on HN[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33833017

Have they fixed the wood burning loophole, where you can burn overseas wood without recognizing any carbon emissions because the carbon accounting places the emissions at the place where the wood was harvested? >In 1996, scientists at the United Nations devised a method to measure global carbon emissions. To simplify the process and avoid double counting, they suggested emissions from burning biomass should be calcul…

I don't think wood-burning is a real emission issue since wood growing/burning is a carbon-cycle and not a fossil taken in the ground and injected forever in the atmosphere...

As long as the wood is coming from tree plantations, not from deforestation of course, which I expect to be mostly the case in North America and Europe.

Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#65

Post by diordiderot »

nathias wrote: post #37
wiz21c wrote: post #22

One question is missing : "what if we had to pay for our environmental footprint" ? Since so few ask it in a meaningful way, I dare to say it is still, unfortunately, a pretty extreme questions for those it should be asked to.

enviromental effects are just one aspect of externalities, if you had to pay all of them, I wonder how many businesses would be left

The ones that deserve to be?

Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#67

Post by latexr »

nathias wrote: post #37
wiz21c wrote: post #22

One question is missing : "what if we had to pay for our environmental footprint" ? Since so few ask it in a meaningful way, I dare to say it is still, unfortunately, a pretty extreme questions for those it should be asked to.

enviromental effects are just one aspect of externalities, if you had to pay all of them, I wonder how many businesses would be left

Your comment made me think of a New Yorker cartoon¹:

> “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”

¹ https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#68

Post by smartbear »

gnicholas wrote: post #10

I like this. In the past, we've considered making our B2C products completely free, as a way to drastically increase our rate of adoption and spur further adoption of our B2B product (which is much more lucrative). But we've never pulled the trigger, out of a fear that we'd be giving up existing revenue, and because it would make it hard to start charging again later if we decided it was the wrong decision. Although…

Great questions and discussion, thanks!

Answering the last bit: "What about those ideas ... which carry a significant risk, but also could yield a significant reward?"

This is perhaps the key question for developing any strategy. This dilemma is not limited to this one exercise! It's the classic "risk/reward" question.

There's a lot of literature on this, some of which is conflicting (of course!). One common example is "Three Horizon Planning," which (I'm bastardizing it for the sake of simplicity) asks you to separate work/projects/ideas into three "future horizons": H1=running the business, zero-risk stuff you know is useful, selling the same product to the same customers; H2=new products sold to the same customers and market, so more risk but more reward; H3=new products sold into new markets, new customers, so maximum risk but also maximum reward, potentially entirely new business units. So for example, Google optimizing search is H1, Google adding "Diagrams" to the suite that already contains "Docs and Sheets" is H2, and Google launching GCP or buying YouTube is H3. Then the idea is that you should have proportional investment in these areas; for example 70/20/10 on H1/H2/H3. Finally, you want different processes and expectations for each thing, since "stuff we should be able to predict" should not carry the same expectations as "stuff with high variance that we cannot predict."

Another rule of thumb I like is to find bets that are very asymmetric, i.e. the potential upsides are orders of magnitude larger than the potential downsides. The stock market or VC works like this, because the most an investor can lose by buying stock is 100% of the investment, but there is no limit to the upside. If possible, you'd multiply those by the probability that they occur, but in my experience, we're all very bad at knowing the probability. :-) So, maybe not so much about the specific numbers, but the broad notion that one should be _orders of magnitude_ larger, not just a little larger -- that's something which should be apparent even without a lot of analysis.

In any event, this is a great question, and it's important for any strategic thinking, not specifically connected to this exercise.

Re: Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

#69

Post by smartbear »

gricardo99 wrote: post #23

What would be the most fun thing to build? This really got me thinking, and excited! But then… It has to be something that makes our product better, not a random technology or unrelated market. :( Boo! Not so much fun anymore.

Well, for a hobby project, you definitely should consider the first and not the second!

Indeed, even for a company, it's wise to be in "Explore" mode sometimes / somewhere, in which case again the constraint might hamper ideas.

So I'd agree with you, removing that constraint could be a great idea!

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