[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.