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Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

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Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#111

Post by simonbarker87 »

This is one of our main points in a presentation my co founder and I give when asked to speak at events.

Our product has useful features for people who struggle to heat their home (our product isn't software, its made of plastic) and our VC sat us down (before they invested) and said that we needed to focus more on the making money side of things and not helping poor people - helping poor people would come as a result of being successful, staying in business and delivering on customer demand. His main point was that without aiming to make money then we wouldn't stay in business very long as no one would invest in us and ultimately no one would benefit from our product.

How you make that money on the other hand, well that's up for discussion, there are a multitude of unethical business practices that make the desire to make money seem unpleasant. Avoid those and wanting to make money is fine.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#114

Post by RobertKohr »

michaelochurch wrote: post #106
pushingbits wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do anything to avoid falling off." This is actually a positive externality (well, depending on how you look at it) of providing some sort of social security net. You get to live in a society where people are less incentivized to stab each other in the back. Of course, they are also less incentivized to work themselves out of be…

I agree completely. Why does the US have so much crime? Because there's no safety net. (The War on Drugs also contributes in a major way.) This ends up being foolish, because we pay more to keep people in prison (over $30,000 per year) than we would by providing them with education and training. We have the resources to get rid of poverty, but we're spending what we have in phenomenally stupid ways.

You have two separate arguments twisted into one.

1) Getting rid of the war on drugs would be a good thing. As it would save money and not cause as much crime (drug war causes crime).

2) You can spend money on education and training to reduce poverty.

Please keep your arguments separate rather than using one issue as a support for another. That 30K per prisoner could be spent on any number of things, or simply not collected from the public at all.

Personally, I agree with 1. That would be fantastic, and I think that there is a political ball rolling slowly towards that.

The second, well, we do spend a lot on education and training. I am not so sure that it does much more than make education more expensive.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#115

Post by jes5199 »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #28
nirvana wrote: post #4

There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…

"Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society." Gambling does not help society, and it is legal: Buy a house for x, sell it to a fool that will pay 4x, who will sell it to a bigger fool for 6x. Now houses go back to x. The only problem is that the bigger fool is the normal American or European middle class that in not an expert on economics and it has been fooled will all their savings from experts…

well, in the state I live in, gambling losses in the state lottery fund the education system.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#116

Post by newbie12 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #106
pushingbits wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do anything to avoid falling off." This is actually a positive externality (well, depending on how you look at it) of providing some sort of social security net. You get to live in a society where people are less incentivized to stab each other in the back. Of course, they are also less incentivized to work themselves out of be…

I agree completely. Why does the US have so much crime? Because there's no safety net. (The War on Drugs also contributes in a major way.) This ends up being foolish, because we pay more to keep people in prison (over $30,000 per year) than we would by providing them with education and training. We have the resources to get rid of poverty, but we're spending what we have in phenomenally stupid ways.

There was far less crime in America before the War on Poverty dramatically expanded the social safety net in the 1960s.

America has a significant anti-poverty safety net -- welfare payments, food stamps, Medicaid health care, public housing vouchers, earned income tax credit, child care subsidies.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#117

Post by pjscott »

maeon3 wrote: post #18

Alternative questions: Is it OK to want to make money at zero sum games where your windfall causes other people's losses? For example roulette, poker, and trading cards? Is it OK to want to make money at win-win games? For example restoring a vehicle, Writing a book or solving a new problem? The problem here is that very powerful organizations in this country are daily trying to brainwash people into thinking that so…

Good point. After you make the distinction between making money at another person's expense, and making money in a way that makes the world as a whole wealthier, the whole question kind of dissolves.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#118

Post by gxs »

cobrausn wrote: post #109
illumin8 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd been a typical HN-reading, Ayn Rand-quoting, John Galt aspiring-libertarian. Slowly, I began to realize the role of luck and circumstance. I used to look down on the poor, writing them all off as lazy and not willing to work. "How dare they be poor and have a TV!", I used to think. Wow. I've come to expect a certain level of hypocrisy from a lot of libertarians, but this is a pretty stark example of it. By all…

I've come to expect hypocrisy from anyone with a strongly held value set. Progressives touting 'diversity' while living in the suburbs and paying exorbitant amounts to send their kids to all-white private schools, conservatives railing about government overreach while trying to enact 'morality' laws, libertarians looking down on moochers while living under a different safety net. This happens because we hold values.…

>> I've come to expect hypocrisy from anyone with a strongly held value set.

I think that succinctly sums it up.

The problem with "values" is that they are an excuse to never have to think critically. Something comes up, you just tag it with a "value" and act accordingly. It simple, it works, and you never have to think!

I don't understand what part of thinking is so taxing that you can't take a couple minutes to make up your mind on each issue vs using big blanket statements to run your life.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#119

Post by newbie12 »

gonehome wrote: post #93
oz wrote: post #72

TL;DR: Yes. Get that money. Get lots of it. Poverty sucks. I left rural Jamaica to come to Kingston, the capital, in 2005. After my first year in college, I got a summer job with a telecom startup run by an American. My student loan was not renewed for the 2nd year, so I had to drop out, and got a permanent position as a sysadmin at the company. The pay sucked, but I didn't care: The family member I was living with w…

Money may not be 'everything', but it does seem to be the universal prerequisite.

Money is just a representation of work...it is a means of storing and exchanging things with one another.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#120

Post by 3pt14159 »

gxs wrote: post #118
cobrausn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to expect hypocrisy from anyone with a strongly held value set. Progressives touting 'diversity' while living in the suburbs and paying exorbitant amounts to send their kids to all-white private schools, conservatives railing about government overreach while trying to enact 'morality' laws, libertarians looking down on moochers while living under a different safety net. This happens because we hold values.…

>> I've come to expect hypocrisy from anyone with a strongly held value set. I think that succinctly sums it up. The problem with "values" is that they are an excuse to never have to think critically. Something comes up, you just tag it with a "value" and act accordingly. It simple, it works, and you never have to think! I don't understand what part of thinking is so taxing that you can't take a couple minutes to mak…

I get where you are coming from on this, but honestly sometimes things are just subclasses (in the programming sense) of something that you have thought a lot about and ultimately completely rejected.

For example: "The government should sometimes run things that private industry can run and compete upon" is the super class of "the government should run envelope delivery" so why should I not just dismiss the second statement immediately if I firmly dismiss the first?

Sometimes edge cases pop up, but why waste the time to go through the cycles of reiterating all the same points?

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