[naikrovek]

it used to be that people started businesses so that they could help others by providing a product or a service to them.

late stage capitalism arrives when people create businesses solely to get rich, and when other companies are created solely to get rich by helping those people create their companies so that they can get rich. that's what ycombinator is.

most of capitalism used to be symbiotic. engaging in transactions with businesses benefited both the business and the consumer.

now we live in a world where most or all of the benefit goes to the business and none or almost none to the consumer.

[bee_rider]

I think very few businesses were created just to help people. Maybe some nonprofits.

Lots of good businesses were created to just make their owners a reasonable income, I mean, most people will take “be rich” if that’s an option but have reasonable expectations.

The problem with heavily invested in companies is occurs when they skip the stage of being a small profitable business with an actual business model.

[naikrovek]

I think even 50 years ago, that most people started businesses because they had a skill and could use it to help others meet their needs.

HP started (more than 50 years ago) with two friends who wanted to make better electronic test equipment. Profit was not forefront in their mind like it is to an MBA graduate today. Hewlett and Packard wanted to provide quality test equipment to people, because a lot of the test equipment of the day was subpar to them.

By the time the 80s rolled around, they paid 100% of an employee's college education (no matter how high they wanted to go with that) and paid them 75% of their salary while they were away at school. College was cheaper then, but zero employers today would even briefly consider paying people any amount at all to not be at work while also paying for the thing keeping them away from work.

corner stores in crowded neighborhoods are not started to maximize profit potential for shareholders. corner stores are started because someone saw the need for a corner store and wanted to make a living running it; they wanted that to be their job.

Until the invention of the MBA I don't think most people who started businesses did so purely for money. There are many easier ways to make money. Today people can start shitting mobile games with pay to win mechanics and they will be rich when the first one takes off. No one creates mobile games with pay to win mechanics because they want people to experience the joy of microtransactions.

Every business today (certainly every tech business) is designed to find out what people want via market research, pick the thing that looks the most profitable, then through a very well developed process, turn that business into a source of retirement money for the founder(s) and a source of return for the investors. It is literally a photocopy model of business creation. "Follow the process and you will succeed."

No one is opening shops today to help their neighbor. No one is opening new bakeries because their town needs one. No one is doing anything that one used to see people doing everywhere they went. Profit-driven motivation ruins everything it touches. Everything.

Everything is profit driven, now. Everything. The MBA is the most disasterous degree ever devised. It makes people think that starting a business purely to make money is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do, and it simply isn't.

[microtherion]

> Zero employers today would even briefly consider paying people any amount at all to not be at work while also paying for the thing keeping them away from work.

Apple definitely had programs to pay all or part of relevant educational programs, and they sometimes paid for people to attend conferences. I'm sure it was much more restrictive than the HP policy you're describing here, but it was definitely more than nothing.

[nullfield]

It was still profit-motivated back then, at least in the positive self-interest manner.

The difference is that colleges actually educated students, and students were actually there to learn.

[naikrovek]

some were, maybe. most weren't. most businesses started symbiotically without profit being the #1 concern at all times. Making enough profit to continue the business is indeed important if you want the business to continue, but as soon as profit becomes your primary goal, you go from being a symbiotic member of society to a parasitic member of society.

Seeking profit above all else is not healthy.

Creating a business used to be done by people who had a skill and wanted to make a living doing it. They wanted their business to be their job. No blacksmiths started a business because they wanted to become rich. They wanted to be blacksmiths, they had pride in their work, and they wanted to have money to live as well.

[heavyset_go]

That's a bit naive. Look at the early industrial revolution, when most goods were still made at home, locally or on a small scale by craftsmen.

People went from having the land and resources to craft, for example, their own shoes, then a few decades later they were in a position where they had to buy shitty factory made shoes that fell apart instead because they were kicked off their land to work in factories.

[microtherion]

I've seen the land that my ancestors left to become factory workers. There simply wasn't enough of it to feed everyone. In fact, the last pre-factory ancestor worked as an itinerant tailor because there was no land for him to cultivate.

I'm pretty sure factory work was a step upward for these families.

[hunterpayne]

If they were giving it away for free and paying a non-zero cost to do it, that's not sustainable. And that clearly isn't taking all the benefit for themselves. This is a take so bad, it isn't a take anymore...its a personality flaw.

[crote]

Literally nobody is making that claim. Nobody expects businesses to be charities.

The thing being argued against is businesses solely being viewed as a "get rich quick" gambling scheme, where the only thing that matters is a rapid rise in shareholder value. VCs don't want a company providing a steady retirement fund, they want you to go for a 1000x return or die trying. The logical end result is that you screw over your customers and employees whenever possible, and burn the entire thing to the ground for the last few bucks. Just look at what Broadcom is doing to VMware: they might've delivered some great shareholder value, but they did huge damage to society in the process!

We shouldn't allow businesses to operate like a cancer which grows forever until it eventually kills its host, leeching off as much in the process as possible. If you want sustainability, you should be clamoring for businesses which are happy to just operate: employ some people, provide a valuable service to society, and make some profit - no need to take over the world in a crazy frenzy chasing unlimited growth.

[naikrovek]

Thank you.

[naikrovek]

Your understanding of what I said is the bad take, here.