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

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

#311

Post by thesteamboat » Sun, Jan 31, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

bregma wrote: post #310

A12-B wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like invoking the word 'rent-seeking' because it's highly subjective. The formal definition is extracting value without providing any. One could easily make the argument that all business investors are like this. Why act like it's just a case of a few people then?

I don't think it's just a case of a few people. Rent-seeking by itself is morally neutral, like guns. Like a gun, it's how you use it that determines if you're contributing positive value to overall society. The purpose of the economy is also not the accumulation of wealth by a few people. Having lots of money is nice but it turns out it's nowhere near the most important thing in life.

> Rent-seeking by itself is morally neutral, like guns. Like a gun, it's how you use it that determines if you're contributing positive value to overall society.

This strikes me as a bad analogy. What differentiates your statement from

Theft by itself is morally neutral, [...] it's what you steal that determines if you're contributing positive value to overall society.

You might be willing to endorse that statement, but I think most people would not.

I think that if you want to assert that rent-seeking is tool-like, with multiple uses some positive and some negative, then the burden of proof is on you to provide some examples.

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

#312

Post by deterministic » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

dm319 wrote: post #108

jspash wrote: post #36

I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the cu…

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

There are many flavours of Capitalism. Some work extremely well (Scandinavia) others less so (Russia/China). However Capitalism still beats anything else humans have ever tried.

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

#313

Post by mbrodersen » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 1:28 AM 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…

Without farming you and everybody else would be naked and starving to death. I can guarantee you that no app will save you then.