[btbuildem]

Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether.

Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

The paradox is baked in, and some of us do our best to navigate it.

[mattgreenrocks]

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made.

Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.

[banannaise]

Rephrased: Any artistic direction done in the interest of creating or increasing profits is overwhelmingly likely to be tasteless.

I don't think that's particularly controversial. Profitability doesn't imply tastelessness, but profit motive certainly does.

[bluGill]

I would argue that if you can't make a profit you have shown you are tasteless. If other people don't enjoy it enough to pay you, that says a lot about how out of step you are.

[i80and]

This would make a number of great artists of history "tasteless".

[bluGill]

A would agree with that for a number of well known artists often called great.

[cwnyth]

If I were to bet on whether the critical consensus or some random person on HN had no taste, I would certainly bet on the latter. This post reeks of "Am I wrong? No! It is the artists, critics, collectors, and community who are wrong!"

[yifanl]

Making profit with art and making art for profit are tangentially related topics at best.

[tauroid]

Saying "out of step" rather than "out of touch" seems like a bit of a Freudian slip.

[watwut]

The "only thing that matters are money" ideology at its peak.

[bluGill]

Money isn't all that matters but it is one of the few objective signs we have.

[banannaise]

Having a number doesn't make the number a good measure.

If all I have is a yardstick, and I'm trying to measure weight, then I would probably be much better served using a qualitative method than by trying to use the yardstick.

[NateEag]

Money is subjective. Like countries, it exists only in people's minds.

Its value comes from agreement by a large number of humans that it is valuable.

A stack of Benjamins would be nigh-valueless to people from 9th-century China.

[red-iron-pine]

the only objective sign that it provides is that you objectively have a lot of money.

if I inherit $44 million dollars because I happened to fall out of the right vagina the only thing it symbolizes is that I got lucky -- I could be a fat, degenerate bastard underserving of anything.

ditto for lottery winners.

[saubeidl]

A true artist is ahead of the tastes of the common rabble.

[krapp]

The vast majority of artists, many of the best, are common rabble.

[saubeidl]

Not artistically, they aren't.

[muststopmyths]

aren't you then equating taste with popularity ?

not sure if that's a popular opinion. In which case it would be tasteless.

[bluGill]

There is no objective measure of taste. Popularity says that at least a lot of other people agree there is taste here.

[tavavex]

Popularity says that a lot of other people agree there is value there. While I'm not informed enough to say what 'taste' means exactly, the common understanding that seems to be present in this comment section is that it's not a direct proxy for goodness, usefulness etc, like what you imply. I think most would agree that there are tasteful things that aren't also mass-marketable immediately useful goods or services.

[dingaling]

Profit is surplus revenue, which means money that people paid you but which you didn't spend on improving your product, paying your staff better etc.

That's why making profit is sometimes seen as greedy, because it's money that could have been reinvested in the product.

Amazon in its early expansion phase never made a profit, because every cent was reinvested. And they didn't need to pay a cent of tax for that reason.

[nlitened]

Profit is “how much your whole is more valuable than the sum of parts it consists of”. If your taste is what makes it valuable, then more profits reflect more taste.

[rhetocj23]

Kinda. But also not true.

When music production was tightly controlled, the competition among labels produced some really, really great songs. Timeless type stuff.

I dont hear anything of that quality anymore.

Tradeoffs. They exist.

[rightbyte]

> Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made.

In the spherical cow in vacuum market maybe. In practice there is rent seeking, profiteering, corruption, nepotism, etc ...

[tsunamifury]

Late stage yes. But design has created the most valuable and profitable products and companies in the world.

Apple Ferrari Google Porsche Smaller companies like Yeti or Braun Etc etc

Once they use design to achieve dominance yes they do the rent seeking you are talking about.

[rhetocj23]

Monopoly profits are the allure of innovation. Its the same reason those life-saving medicines get developed (patents).

Why is this a bad thing? Personally Id rather have an Apple monopoly than MSFT for instance. I really love using my Apple products. I never enjoyed using a single MSFT product.

[red-iron-pine]

u/rhetocj23 is a one day old account made of random characters that is actively advocating for an Apple monopoly and talking shit about MSFT in multiple posts.

remember folks 20-40% of social media is bots -- this is just a low-hanging fruit

[rhetocj23]

you sound like a cry baby.

[fssys]

in order for anything to become truly profitable its uniqueness must be quantified and integrated into existing power structures, it must be expressly oriented towards fulfilling the needs/desires of the largest amount of people for the least amount of expenditure. Profitability IS intrinsically distasteful. Market forces, online ecosystems etc, quickly strip away any idiosyncratic features present in a viral trend, they aggressively select for sticking power, everything tends toward uniformity. This is closely linked with the process of reification.

[yoyohello13]

A lot of open source developer don't get paid for their work, but their stuff is often used by everyone. There has to be a 'will to make it profitable'.

[kingkongjaffa]

Taste in this context is more referring to design rather than art though.

[apwell23]

yes bedrotting watching reels all day is a valuable product. So is heroine. So eating junk food.

Great logic.

[StilesCrisis]

Maybe by the textbook definition, sure.

Not a single user finds advertising valuable, and yet it’s the focal point of profit maximization nowadays. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.

[literalAardvark]

Many people find advertising valuable.

It's tracking, micro targeting, retargeting, and trying to sell me a fridge that I literally just bought while I'm off reading about sailboats that's intrusive.

Advertise shoes, cleats, sails, and charters in the Bahamas while I'm doing that, not singles near me and bicycles because I posted in a Facebook group.

[tonyedgecombe]

>Many people find advertising valuable.

Presumably the advertisers do.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Advertising and public relations has always been applied psychology. The contemporary interation was originally developed by Freuds nephew (Edward Bernays). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

I highly recommend The Century of the Self for a great documentary on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

[tpoacher]

Only for modern definitions of advertising, mind you, which are all about dark patterns and invasive marketing, rather than putting a descrption of your product out there that can be searched by interested parties looking to buy a product like yours.

There were times were advertising was useful and desirable, e.g. Small Ads pages.

There was also a time when ads were a single unintrusive scrolling line, curated by the website owner so as to be relevant to their audience. Those were fine.

[grafmax]

And yet it’s the profit motive that has driven the shift to widespread usage of dark patterns and invasive marketing.

[tpoacher]

We're not disagreeing, but in the sense that the language we use is important, I would not say it's the profit motive, but uncontrolled greed, that has driven this shift.

Reasonable profit is necessary. Something needs to put food on the table, both for your own family and that of your workers.

What you don't need is a 3 million dollar jet on the table at the expense of both your workers and your customers.

[sdsd]

>Welcome to late-stage capitalism

That phrase has always seemed a bit wishful to me, like when Christians describe our era as the end times or when crypto people say "it's still early days".

[rhetocj23]

I dont really get that phrase. I always view people who use it as intellectually lazy.

[yoyohello13]

Yeah I think there is probably plenty more pain to come. I mean, we don't even have corporate controlled governments yet. Although that seems to be coming real soon.

[phyzix5761]

How do consumers discover new products and services if not through advertising? A product on a shelf at a store is also a form of advertising proven by how much money is spent on packaging. Word of mouth is also one of the most effective forms of advertising.

[esseph]

> How do consumers discover new products

By looking them up when they need them

[lazide]

Sometimes sure, but more often than not they ‘realize’ they need x thing because recently they were told they need x thing. It’s a big oroborous.

[esseph]

TBF trying to sell me on anything with a commercial, print advertisement, video ad, cold call, or anything else is an exercise in frustration.

[ndriscoll]

Consider "advertising" as shorthand for "paid promotion" i.e. "lying". Why would product or service discovery require the people making recommendations to take money from the producers they're recommending? How could that ever result in a world where customers receive anything but the worst possible recommendations?

Word of mouth: fine

Product on a shelf: fine unless you made a deal with the manufacturer/distributor to put it prominently rather than believing it deserves to be there

Taking money to give an endorsement: Bad. That makes you a liar.

It's the dishonesty at the heart of almost all advertising that makes it bad (well that and the often accompanying implicit push for people to frivolously consume).

[Aerroon]

>Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether.

This is a mixup that the author of the article makes as well:

>Copying and pasting code without understanding it.

>Sending resumes and emails that aren’t proofread and edited.

>Asking others to review code without giving it a self review.

>Noticing a quality issue and failing to document or fix it.

These are not issues of taste.

[9rx]

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do

Why's that? Profit, of course, is just the measure of how much trade is undelivered.

The old: I give you my corn to feed your chickens, and at some point in the future you will give me chickens in return once they are fed and grown. The amount of undelivered chickens are my profit. But eventually you will provide the chickens as promised, theoretically. Fair trade doesn't seem tasteless.

And if I forever hold on to that profit and never expect you to give me the chickens in the future as you originally promised, then I literally gave you the corn for free. How could it be tasteless to help someone out by giving them something for free?

Perhaps you are actually thinking of something like regulatory capture that is oft associated with profit? I can see how that becomes quite tasteless and certainly the tech industry in particular loves to exploit that. I am not sure that underpins our professional efforts, though. The tech industry would still exist even without all the insane laws that surround it.

[boringg]

Pretty good comment. It's a spectrum right? So if you went all in on profits you are likely all in on tastelessness. If you profit a small amount your probably only shedding a bit of your taste.

However I would wager the argument many people have is that they view their professional life as not utilizing their taste and that is reserved for decisions in their private lives (for those who still keep the two relatively distinct). For those who have truly merged professional and personal and gone all in profit -- original point probably stands. Thats pretty tasteless!

[whywhywhywhy]

Almost all the artifacts considered beautiful from the last 500 years came from the use of excess profit invested into beauty and legacy.

[rhetocj23]

Hang on, it depends on the intent.

Should an entity strive to be profitable? of course. How else will it be self sustaining?

The problem arises when entities maximize for profit with no non-financial values that underpin their decision making.

[serf]

>Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

Speak for yourself, not everyone works for the paycheck.

[philipallstar]

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts.

This needs some justification. Profits are what you get when you can do something for less than you charge for it, and be competitive. To not be good enough to make profit you need to be able to force money out of people e.g. with taxes.

[CGMthrowaway]

OK, Banksy.