Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

agreed, and this

> the business was run by a set of sociopaths supervised by a board of geriatrics with no experience in the industry

...is far too often the case, so if one is gifted and fortunate enough to choose who one works for, one lesson might be: put serious effort and consideration into the decision

I think we all will be happier if we stop treating the vast majority of our life as a monetary transaction. If you accept being a disposable cog, you become a disposable cog.

"Family" is an exaggeration, but work as a meaningful, socially and emotionally enriching activity is not a luxury. Its what most people would be more comfortable with.

There is nothing inevitable in the current shape of businesses. They are, ahem, ephemeral optimizations, based on very specific contractual arrangements.

The problem is the institutions that are okay with being ephemeral evaporate away when their job is done, leaving behind a salty brine of institutions that aren't. In any system where there is selective pressure, survival becomes incredibly selected for, often being prioritized over all else.

Marketing can increase the size of the market. Making deals with other businesses can too (they pay a fixed monthly fee and get unlimited washes for all their cars, etc.). I used to wash my car myself but the automated car wash is so convenient I just go there instead. There's also a customer service aspect. I used to go to a more expensive car wash because the employees there were really friendly and at the other one they weren't.

Then there's the business aspect of starting this sort of business: deciding on what location is best, whether it's even a good business to start, etc. This is one area where people who want to be tech entrepreneurs are handicapping themselves and people who just go into business to make money do better. Lots of people think, "I need to start an AI startup" or devops, or whatever, instead of asking what opportunity is best for them.

Ephemerality is the only workable solution to mission drift in an organization.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs don't set out to create surveillance capitalism[1] or enslave children[2], but over time the pressures of keeping the business alive and growing force you to make compromises. The compromises are small, but each one takes you farther and farther from your values. Eventually you end up doing things that are abhorrent to any normal person, but seem normal to you because they're not that different from the thing you did before. This happens with all kinds of organizations including nonprofits, churches, etc.

One of the things I've observed in the success of organizations such as 12-step groups, is that they have principles which they can and do "die" for--rules like "We would rather dissolve the group than do X". Groups in a 12-step program are autonomous--they follow certain principles (traditions) and often groups die off rather than break tradition. Similarly, impermanence is a core feature of Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs)[3] which allows it to avoid perversion of its ideals.

I think ephemerality is a good idea for businesses, as I think it's a key step in the direction of making capitalism more ethical. Businesses which can't operate ethically should fail, and our society should have safety nets for dealing with that (and other reasons a business should fail). But that's such a fundamental shift in thinking about business. Half of HN seems to think that if a company is making money it must be because they're good, despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary so we have to keep letting those businesses do what they're doing, without any regulation. I'm not sure how we can get to a future where businesses behave ethically when the unethical businesses have successfully sold the idea that their success can only have been achieved ethically, as a rule of economics.

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

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/m...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone