[aloneinkyoto]

This is the paradox of capitalism. Focus on creating something inherently good and it will not be sustainable. Focus on creating something sustainable and profitable and it will most likely not be as inherently good as it could be.

Example: McDonalds. Brilliant business model. Awful product.

[nwomack]

McDonalds quality control is second to none. Their standard menu tastes practically the same everywhere in the world. It's the same with Starbucks. I know that no matter what part of the planet I am at, I can get exactly what I expect to get. I'm never disappointed. I can't stress how important that part is. Bad quality control can really injure restaurants.

[mikeash]

Perfect consistency is only useful if your perfectly consistent product is any good. Much depends on your target audience. Bad quality control can hurt a lot, but so can perfect consistency in producing a bad product. If your audience is the sort that thinks McDonald's is quality food then that's obviously where you should aim, but many audiences don't.

[hessenwolf]

Having worked in Quality Control in a major multinational, and studied and lecture statistics, I have seen that significant decreases in quality are accepted in exchange for increased consistency.

[gaius]

Quality is the measure of how closely a finished product meets its design spec. McDonald's products are insanely high quality, despite not being very good - a Big Mac was never designed to be healthy and satisfying in the first place!

A relevant example of this is organizations who are CMM Level 5 certified.

[rick888]

I have to disagree with you there. If Mcdonalds had such an "awful" product, nobody would eat there and it wouldn't be as popular. There are plenty of alternatives.

[JoeAltmaier]

Some of their food is very tasty; all of it is pretty bad for you physically. I particularly enjoy the large sweet tea for $1.06.

However I have to agree that others do it better. Hardees has the best fast-food burger around. Also the best ads :)

[aloneinkyoto]

The point I was trying to make with the McDonalds example was simply that a scalable and successful business model necessarily implies that they are unable to create the "perfect" hamburger. They have practical limitations inherent to their process that makes it impossible. If they instead were running a two star luxury restaurant they might have a chance at making a perfect product. But that wouldn't be a scalable and sustainable business, and most like not very profitable either. Most luxury restaurants have extremely low margins and in many cases operates with considerable losses.

And just to make it clear, I am not trying to criticizes capitalism per se. I'm only basically stating the same thing the article is stating; that there is an inherent paradox in capitalism that makes it more complex to deal with than is directly apparent. Everyone that goes into business or deals with business indirectly through policy-making should be as aware as possible of this paradox, simply because it will prevent us from collectively ending up in a world with great processes but awful products or with great products but awful processes. Neither of which are very tempting scenarios.

[brador]

I was going to reply with what you said but then I thought, since they're the in that "most calories per dollar" bucket, maybe poor people eat there out of necessity and not choice...

[philwelch]

Most of the alternatives are equally awful.

[aloneinkyoto]

Why am I being down voted for this? It is not spam and not intended as flame bait. It is not off topic and it is not pointless humor. It is a serious comment that needs to be debated and not hidden away at the bottom of the page.

I am not stating anything extremely controversial, simply the same thing the article is stating, but with a slightly different wording.

Don't down vote me because you disagree with me or because you think I am bashing capitalism (I am not, I love capitalism). If you think my argument is weak or lacking, please tell me so in a comment instead.

[chc]

You are making a much bolder claim than the article, a very specious claim to boot (that for some reason sustainable businesses can't do good work), and you are not providing any supporting evidence for this controversial claim. You may not have meant it as a troll, but the effect is very similar

The article is just saying that running an X business means you spend a lot more of your time on the "running a business" part than the X part, for any value of X. It doesn't mean you can't do a good job at X — just that you get to enjoy X more as a consumer than a producer.

[aloneinkyoto]

I didn't claim that a sustainable businesses can't do good work. I simply claimed that sustainability is at odds with producing good things. Which is a fairly different claim. Though I can see how the distinction was not perfectly clear in my comment.

But to be honest I thought I was being very careful in my wording about something that should be self evident, e.g.

"...will most likely not be as inherently good as it could be."

Running a business implies a trade-off. The trade-off is that if you want to be successful (i.e. sustainable) you need to focus on the business and not the product. Which is exactly what the article is stating.

Maybe a better example to support my claim is Apple. They make great products. But the way they do that is by focusing on the process of creating great products. Jonathan Ive specifically talks about this in the Objectified documentary. He says that most of their time is spent on designing the manufacturing process and the tools needed to mass-produce the products, only a very small part of the time is spent on the actual design of the phone or computer and that design is almost always a direct implication of the manufacturing process rather than something they magically dream up in some creative haze.

[chc]

I don't understand your example at all. Are you saying that Apple's business model is not sustainable or that Apple doesn't make good things?

[jerf]

Well, I'll tell you what tipped me over the edge was when you played the "whoa, tell me what's wrong instead of downmodding me" when timestamps show at least three people engaging with you before this post you made here.

[aloneinkyoto]

Yes, but the only feedback provided was that my argument was a straw-man. I.e. they disagreed with the point I was trying to make. And as far as I understand, the social contract on Hacker News implies that you don't down vote if you disagree, only if the comment is spam or trolling, etc.

Although I suppose I'm on the verge of becoming somewhat of a troll right now.

[icebraining]

(...) argument was a straw-man. I.e. they disagreed with the point I was trying to make.

Pointing out that your argument is a straw-man is not a disagreement. It's saying that you are misrepresenting the article's position, and that's an objectively bad post.

Also, I'm not sure if downvoting when disagreeing is discouraged. Spam should be marked by flagging, not downvoting.

[lhnn]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'd downvote you if I could, not because I disagree with you, but because this is a strawman.

The author used a low margin, low sucess business example to make a point about what mindset someone should be in to successfully run a business. You took from that the message that anything enjoyable is not sustainable.

"Focus on creating something inherently good --> it will not be sustainable"

You also less directly imply that focusing on profit will necessitate producing an inferior product, again using a specific example to provide a generality.

[aloneinkyoto]

That something is enjoyable does not make it inherently good (unless you ascribe to Utilitarianism). There are of course other factors beyond pure enjoyment that contribute to the inherent goodness of a thing. You don't need to enjoy a medical device in order for it to be able to do its job well, for example.

Rather, the distinction I was aiming at was between "process" and "product". But I suppose that wasn't very clear. My intention was not to start a flame war on capitalism.

In my opinion a process can be sustainable (and thus very likely profitable), but a product can not. In this case a business model is a process and the thing you put in your mouth (the hamburger) is the product. For the hamburger to be perfect we would need an ever escalating process. Constantly adding more complexity or work to refine the product we can create thus creating an unsustainable process.

If you want to create a hamburger in a sustainable and profitable way. The McDonalds process is most likely one of the best ways to do that. But it will NEVER create a perfect hamburger. The same is of course true with the opposite. A tiny connoisseur coffee shop can conceivably create a perfect cup of coffee and push the boundaries of the state of the art. But it will NEVER be a sustainable process. You need to make compromises in order to achieve that.

[quinndupont]

Coffee is an insanely high margin product. You think it costs $4.00 for the 5 grams of coffee in your drink?

[true_religion]

Coffee itself is high margin, but the coffee business is not a high margin business.

You have to employ people to make coffee manually, and quickly. You have to buy a machine to aid them in this, and keep it in good maintenance.

Additionally, you have to supply perishables like milk to go in the coffee.

You have to keep them in your shop buying coffee, or incite them to buy coffee here when they're hungry instead of going to go to dunkin dounuts.

You can do this with nice decor, or by placing yourself in an already attractive location, or taking a margin loss on selling bake goods in order to bring in coffee customers.

In any case, your high margins for coffee product have rapidly vanished.

[icebraining]

Coffee prices in the US are odd. 'round here (Southern European country) we pay less than a dollar for a coffee. Well, except in Starbucks, but then again, that's my point.