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by RangerScience 1792 days ago
AFAICT, this is one of those counter-intuitive cases. Mission-driven companies tend to (AFAIK) do better than pure profit-driven companies; similarly, AFAIK, companies that take morality seriously tend to do better. A significant aspect of this (IMHO) is employee empowerment, which relates to the common theories as to why Silicon Valley happened rather than the Boston corridor (legal situation advantageous to employees).

Other things that come to mind: "Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice." https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ags - "If the stock market made any sense, you'd be able to exploit that sense and capitalize on it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

So it makes "logical sense" IFF short-term improvements/non-losses of control, power, and position lead to profit, and that's not something that's logically provable. Rather, that's something that's got to be observed experimentally, and AFAIK it ...isn't.

If your goal-metric is money, you run into both what SMBC is pointing out, and Goodhart's law. If your goal-metric is something else, money is an "easy" by-product.

> how can we work to promote moral behavior?

IMHO sociological studies examining this. "Seek money, make nothing. Seek to make, get money twice", or something.

1 comments

> Mission-driven companies tend to (AFAIK) do better than pure profit-driven companies; similarly, AFAIK, companies that take morality seriously tend to do better.

Do you have links to any studies backing this up? The idealist in me really wants this to be true, but the cynic in me believes capitalism is set up to reward the most ruthless, unscrupulous people.

I do not :/ It's a soundbyte that I've heard within the startup space (probably HN, ages ago).

But - what's be your top 10 list of successful startups? How many of them are either directly mission-driven, or have a strong mission?