Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
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Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
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Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#2it's a compelling idea imo, if one considers the many ills wrought by organizations which outlive their usefulness and turn to parasitism
but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating
a similar concept could be fruitful in material technology as well, where ephemeral doesn't mean "obsolete in 2 years so we can sell you a new one", but rather "can be dis/reassembled into something else when one chooses, or, if disposed of, will biodegrade into ecologically benign constituents"
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#3it's a compelling idea imo, if one considers the many ills wrought by organizations which outlive their usefulness and turn to parasitism but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating a similar concept could be fruitful in material technology as well, where ephemeral doesn't mean "obsolete in 2 years so we can sell you a n…
> but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating
What does this mean? Isn't all wealth that can be used to purchase goods or services "pre-existing" and by definition going to the owners of companies if they manage to make a profit? I might be missing something because it seems you just described all businesses so I wouldn't know who you're advocating to penalize or how we'd distinguish them from the businesses that aren't "hollow".
I can come up with some scenarios that maybe you'd have a problem with, but it's not clear which ones, or why?
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#4Here's a link to the poem [0].
It's an interesting thought, but I wonder if "poem" back in the before times just meant "blog post" before they had those words.
[0] https://motivateus.com/stories/reason-season-lifetime.htm
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#5If you get back down to basics, as business is an equitable arrangement where you offer to solve a problem, in exchange for making a profit in the process.
At some point, the problem may no longer exist, or you may not be able to continue to make a profit. That's OK! You can pivot, or move on to another business.
What I would love to see represented is some thinking around what should happen as a matter of best practice when you decide to fold the business. There's likely paying customers left behind - to use an extreme example, let's consider the case of artificial vision where people are left with implants that often no longer work, that nobody will remove:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60416058
The right thing for customers of course would be to open source the technology so they can pursue other avenues. The friction with this idea is that, maintaining ownership of the IP might be valuable later (someone may want to buy it, some new opportunity to build on the tech may arise). It would be great if there was a government institution which would compensate such businesses for their tech to open source it.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#6Movies and theater productions are ephemeral businesses. As are popup stores.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#7No we shouldn't. In fact we should denormalize a lot of dysfunctional business models, the transactional, excessively financialised, dehumanised business that has become the norm.
A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village. We dont want ephemeral families, we dont want ephemeral communities.
What we have is not working (pun). The overall drift of the last decades has led to an ephemeral society, made us unhappy, insecure, unstable. We need to go back to more grounded forms.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#8Edging every closer to Stross’ vision in Accelerando.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#9it's a compelling idea imo, if one considers the many ills wrought by organizations which outlive their usefulness and turn to parasitism but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating a similar concept could be fruitful in material technology as well, where ephemeral doesn't mean "obsolete in 2 years so we can sell you a n…
> but rather "can be dis/reassembled into something else when one chooses,
That doesn't happen often enough to matter. Not everyone is/want to be a maker. or would even bother even if it is simple
> or, if disposed of, will biodegrade into ecologically benign constituents"
That should already be a thing. Hell, add the utilization to product price that then can be paid to recycling company on utilization. That way products actually cheap/easy to recycle would also be cheaper
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#10Movies and theater productions are ephemeral businesses. As are popup stores.
Garage/Estate/Yard sales as well.
Movie and Theater is sort of both ephemeral and not - there's theaters, production companies, theater troops, etc. which are more permanent, but assembling them into a project is like building a working city from ready-made components, and then disassembling it once you're done.