21 ms·

What happens when a culture is driven by the need for money to make more money

• treelovinhippie 11y ago
  If KickStarter truly reflects these ideals, they should decentralize their crowdfunding platform on the blockchain (eg Ethereum) and only charge the bare minimum fee required to maintain/grow that platform...
• cryoshon 11y ago
  I love this article. It definitely hits on a bunch of really important points with regard to the tendency for capital to accumulate more capital, and for capital to remain in place rather than flow once it has established a large bolus. I would prefer things discussed in these terms rather than "banks on every corner in Manhattan" because it strikes at the heart of the issue rather than a symptom of the issue. The heart of the issue is that our society has been warped to accept capital as its only philosophical value, and, as a result, we have come to worship large accumulations of capital despite their extremely deleterious effect on many other aspects of society. The mitigation and eventual mending of the wounds caused by late capitalism is probably going to be the work of an entire generation of people. Thankfully, people have begun to recognize the problems of capital accumulation and stagnation, so we have perhaps only twenty or fourty years before we can make meaningful headway on this issue-- maybe even only five to ten years if there's some major rattling of the cage, but it hasn't materialized yet. "At some point in the past ten years, selling out lost its stigma. I come from the Kurt Cobain/“corporate rock still sucks” school where selling out was the worst thing you could ever do. We should return to that. Don’t sell out your values, don’t sell out your community, don’t sell out the long term for the short term. Do something because you believe it’s wonderful and beneficial, not to get rich." In the past ten years, the tension between "not selling out" and "feeding myself and paying my student loans" has reached a breaking point where increasingly few people can maintain an acceptable standard of living and not take lucrative opportunities. In other words: the opportunity cost of "not selling out" has skyrocketed to unsustainable levels. This is caused by many factors, and will not reverse itself until we have some form of major scale resource redistribution. The realistic summary is that doing wonderful and beneficial things leads to the poorhouse, and "selling out" for most people leads to a middling barely-financially-secure existence that falls far short of getting rich and still doesn't have enough resources to plan for the long term. "Don’t sink into the morass of “industry standards.” Don’t succumb to the inertia of the status quo. Don’t stop exploring new ideas. A small number of people can change how society works. It’s happened before and it will happen again." I doubt that many of us want to sink to the median, but the status quo has a way of smashing down people who try to explore new perspectives, and the economics of this fact are especially fierce right now. This is part of the problem, of course: the accumulated capital has an overwhelming interest to maintain the status quo of their wealth, and has many resources to kneecap change. Then (because this is related to Kickstarter, I am obligated to write this) there's the fallacy that inventing a new toy or app will change society-- sometimes it's possible, but on average it doesn't happen. I'd like an app for social change, but even something as simple as an app which lists what companies to boycott on a given day would probably run into legal trouble very quickly. "Look at the language on that cover: “be paranoid,” “go to war.” Its violence suggests that being ruthless is the only way to survive. We all hear this tone all around us." Yes, I have noticed the terms of violence / natural selection being pushed in order to make people more vicious toward each other in their pursuit of making a living. Largely, this language-shifting effort has worked, and people view each other as competitors for resources rather than potential allies to increase the wealth of the community. I will state that this kind of anarchistic worldview benefits employers and corporations a tremendous amount, and benefits the public not at all. I suspect this is one of the contributing factors to reduced mental health in the US, and also one of the contributing factors toward people shunning union work. And yes, the prioritization of money above all other considerations is one of the major problems that has almost always existed in America. The people with the most money have lived here through the modern era, and have shaped the USA to funnel money into their coffers. Rather than lament about how we can't kill these people and take their cash, I think it's more productive to think about the policies we can specifically ask for which would prevent radical wealth accumulation in the first place. Right now I think the best path forward is to come up with a scheme which redistributes capital downward and breaks up the largest clumps of stagnant money. I have no idea how the math on this is going to work out, but the sooner we get the political wheels in motion (Bernie Sanders is a good start, but we need about 300 more of his type before we can make headway) the sooner we can start to undo the damage caused by the crony-capitalism economic policy of the last 40 years. Rather than prioritizing the ability for people to make vast sums of money (and make no mistake, we have prioritized this), we should prioritize raising the standard of living of the median citizen and ensuring equality of opportunity. I guess this means either a negative income tax or UBI.
  • Futurebot 11y ago
    > the opportunity cost of "not selling out" has skyrocketed to unsustainable levels That's phrased perfectly, and exactly what I came here to say. For the 'marginal careerist', one with just enough opportunity to get ahead, but not enough to float by (e.g., possessing rich relatives) there isn't an easy choice. Staying ahead of a changing job market, increasing barriers to entry (credentialism and other funnel-narrowing HR filters), ageism, and the knowledge that the tattered safety net isn't going to help them very much if they fall out means they won't necessarily have the luxury of saying 'no' to every dubious opportunity presented to them. It's no longer just about winning the rat race. For many of today's rats, it's now about staying on the ship at all. The original article is one of those feel-good articles that I want to agree with. It's earnest and idealistic, and brings up several important points. For those who are able to do what Mr. Kickstarter is able to do (to make those socially responsible choices that maximize for self-interest AND social good [i.e, enlightened self-interest] instead of maximizing for selfishness) that's actually all great and beneficial. I like it. Many of his observations, too, are spot on. His recommendation however, that tells people to 'do that' reveals a lack of perspective on the actual lived experience of many people functioning within the modern reality. Collective action problems can't be solved by individuals, nor by socially conscious companies (as nice as those may be.)
    • YanceyKSR 11y ago
      it really is phrased perfectly, and i agree completely about the challenging tension of that question. i feel it distinctly, especially as i am expecting my first child in just a couple of months and i do not come from money. i feel like the moment selling out became okay culturally coincided w/ file-sharing decimating the music industry and we all unconsciously thought, "well shit musicians have to make a living somehow" and then pop/indie/classic rock was in commercials and everyone was generally cool with it. and i don't have a big issue with it, and absolutely want to live in a world where artists can have sustainable lives through their craft and don't want certain avenues to be off-limits because they seem cheaper than others but played out to the nth degree it just all becomes overwhelming and dispiriting. anyway, just wanted to say i really appreciated reading these two thoughts. i very much agree
• dhcar 11y ago
  Blaming negative societal effects on people wanting to make money is akin to blaming gravity for airplane crashes. Moreover, the people that would listen to these pleas for putting society before the dollar aren't the type that are investing large sums, and those that are investing probably don't care to listen.
  • lifeformed 11y ago
    The article isn't blaming them, it's trying to be cognizant of what's going on and starting a discussion about what can be done.
• gtpasqual 11y ago
  Kickstarter wouldn't be here without the 'monoculture'. In 2011, they've raised 10 million dollars. They should thank the Fed and abundance of capital.
• ddxv 11y ago
  Like clouds of gas in space gathering mass, money attracts more money.
  • hliyan 11y ago
    It has been said that turning $100 into $110 is work, but turning $100,000,000 into $110,000,000 is inevitable.
    • stillsut 11y ago
      It's also been said the best way to build 100M company is to start with 1B company and run it on intuition. MC Hammer, 50cent (?), so many multi-millionaire athletes are bankrupt. The fact that the basic institutions we require to exist - banks, convenience stores - stay financially viable is something we take for granted. I'm not sure tne new-kickstarter-economy can exist without the persistence of the old boring economy of scarce resources.
• hliyan 11y ago
  I've recently come to the conclusion that any society where it is easier for the rich become richer than it is for the poor to become richer, regardless of its starting state, will tend toward feudalism over time. While modern day America is starting to look more and more like a data point that supports this conclusion, I'd like to think that there's a certain amount of mathematical certainty involved too: money => more money ------- (1) money <=> power ----------- (2) (1) and (2) over time will result in the bifurcation of society into two groups: the rich and powerful, and the rest. This probably doesn't apply to corporations though.
  • jonknee 11y ago
    You should read Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. It deals with this concept extensively.
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Seconded for Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
    • forinti 11y ago
      This is an interesting book. It gives a different angle on the ideia in Yanis Varoufakis' book The Global Minotaur which is that money has to circulate in order for the economy to function with stability. You just can't let it pile up too much in one place.
      • yummyfajitas 11y ago
        Most of the wealth held by the rich isn't money failing to circulate. It's productive capacity producing goods for others. Elon Musk's wealth isn't a vault full of gold coins. It's a factory producing cars that other people get to drive. Piketty's book describes this phenomenon as well - his book is fundamentally about the world moving from a situation of having a $1M factory producing $100k in income to a situation of a $2M factory producing $150k in income. (I.e., r=2, g=1.5.)
• myth_buster 11y ago
  Evidently, Capitalism needs to be hacked. _For Profit_ doesn't cut it and is buggy. The side-effects are the waste due to consumerism, unsustainability and potential application crash (climate & earth). The variables in the model needs to be tweaked so a new system evolves.
  • harryh 11y ago
    http://bit.ly/1MBTFzC http://bit.ly/1MBTFzC
    • rjruxhchd 11y ago
      That trend started long before our society's current pillaging by the rich and their big businesses. The global elimination of poverty has more to do with grassroots technological and industrial development than it does with concentrating as much capital in as few hands as possible.
    • wavefunction 11y ago
      It's not very clever to just post a picture, as if that makes a very compelling argument for whatever you presumably are trying to make. It's nice that less people are living off the equivalent of $1.25 a day, but according to this: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta... 50% of the world's population live off the equivalent of $2.50 a day. I guess we can cheer that 30% of the world's inhabitants have doubled their income and call it a day.
      • harryh 11y ago
        Who says we're calling it a day? The rate at which capitalism is pulling people out of poverty is accelerating not stopping.
        • fjrjcjjcdh 11y ago
          >capitalism is pulling people out of poverty Citation needed. You have to control for other factors before you can say that.
• 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
  > In New York City, many of the businesses that move in are banks. There are more than 1,800 bank branches in New York — 60% more than there were a decade ago. There was an article about this in the Wall Street Journal last year[1]. Excerpt: > But why open a branch on every corner? The blame, it turns out, lies with us. We're asking for it. > TD, which has more than 1,300 branches in cities up and down the East Coast, conducted a customer survey and discovered that, compared to the rest of the nation, New Yorkers are obsessed with branch convenience. While folks in other towns value frivolities like friendly service, New Yorkers more often rank convenient ATMs and branches a top priority. They want locations near their homes, their offices and the offices of their spouses, says Mr. Giamo. They want to see their bank everywhere they go. When it comes to the subject of community, a lot of people don't want to accept that communities are dynamic. The ways in which they change are almost always driven by the needs and wants of the people in those communities, even though you will always find vocal people in those communities who swear that can't be the case. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/all-those-banks-in-new-york-city-its-our-fault-1402100947 http://www.wsj.com/articles/all-those-banks-in-new-york-city...
  • m-i-l 11y ago
    Interesting to read that the number of bank branches is actually increasing in New York. In the UK the opposite is happening as more and more consumers are doing their banking online: "the UK has lost a quarter of its retail bank branches over the past ten years" (650 estimated closures in 2015, 500 in 2014 and 222 in 2013) [0]. Many of the closed banks are turned into bars, see [1] for some nice examples. [0] http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=28007 http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=28007 [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/29801667/see-the-pubs-that-were-converted-from-old-bank-branches http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/29801667/see-the-pubs-...
    • walshemj 11y ago
      Yes that struck me as odd as well uk banks are shedding staff and closing branches. You would have expected the same to play out in the USA.
  • 11y ago
• maloney 11y ago
  If your money does not make you money, you are losing money. This article neglects inflation and monetary policy completely. There are more banks then ever, because it's more profitable to be a bank than ever before. We have had almost an entire decade of 0% interests rates allowing banks to make incredible sums of money.
  • titzer 11y ago
    Inflation is driven by monetary policy and both are symptoms of the exact same systemic problem he is describing. Inflation is a side-effect of increasing the money supply in order to generate more trade. More trade does not equate to more wealth or more goods or a higher standard of living.
    • maloney 11y ago
      Not sure we are in disagreement. The cause is monetary policy. More money equals growth in the economy it also causes inflation, forcing people to protect their money by investing. This was not mentioned in the article. The need to make more money is a symptom not the cause.
    • hammock 11y ago
      According to the view generally accepted in economics, more trade absolutely equates to more wealth. "In every voluntary exchange we give up something we value less than what we receive... and so does the person we are trading with. Trade benefits both parties and this benefit is an increase in wealth for both." http://www.fte.org/teacher-resources/lesson-plans/rslessons/the-magic-of-markets-trade-creates-wealth/ http://www.fte.org/teacher-resources/lesson-plans/rslessons/...
      • titzer 11y ago
        1.) There are a whole lot of involuntary transactions in real economies. 2.) The argument only applies to perceived value, not wealth. Wealth is objective and measurable, e.g. the number of houses or cars or widgets in existence.
      • 11y ago
• disantlor 11y ago
  Within the last year multiple bank branches has opened with in a 5-10 block radius of my apartment in Brooklyn. I never see people in them, literally I have never seen anyone besides the employees gazing out forlornly at people on the street. They take up huge amounts of space and and are extremely bright which makes them oddly depressing at night. Gentrification arguments aside, I'm confused because they don't seem to have customers (and again there are multiple) and certainly that will only be more true as younger people have less and less connection to the physical bank branch.
  • gefh 11y ago
    Yes, it seems there should be diminishing returns on opening extra branches. And if the bank just wants to own the real estate, they should be able to find more profitable tenants. I'd be happy to go an extra few blocks if a branch was open outside of regular business hours!
  • indymike 11y ago
    Just was in a bank in a nice neighborhood in Indianapolis. Asked the banker how it stayed open with little traffic. His answer is that the branch was an asset it could be leveraged to allow the bank to loan more money.
    • yourapostasy 11y ago
      Can someone in the retail financial services industry familiar with their regulation please clarify this assertion? It almost sounds as if there is some rule that allows a bank to open a retail branch, declare that branch an asset and simultaneously expand its loaning capacity, then use that loaning capacity elsewhere (like its trading arm). This is a variation on the old 80-90's Japanese corporations using real-estate-as-asset-securing-loans bookkeeping: at some point someone notice that they could pledge real estate the company owned as collateral to secure loans that could be leveraged into more real estate for more loans, and then churn the real estate holdings in a up-trend market and rinse-repeat for even bigger loan packages. Even in a post-Gramm–Leach–Bliley world that repealed Glass–Steagall, it stretches my credulity to believe that even lax bank regulation would allow branch openings at a completely speculative stage (with no proven loan activity yet) to partly drive bank loanable reserve levels. I'm more inclined to believe that these branches don't see a lot of foot traffic in the Net era, but that they justify their cost by sporadically serving customers in a local market who already hold loan products serviced by the bank, and need an occasional in-person visit to the bank.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• div0 11y ago
  The sad thing about changes brought by money and for money is that we don't have a community anymore. We don't even know what it looks and feel like. I honestly want to find such a place to live and raise my kids haven't found an example of it anywhere (in US)
  • tyrust 11y ago
    >haven't found an example of it anywhere (in US) http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/08/19/urban-tribe/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/08/19/urban-tribe/ Note that I'm not an expert in the field nor do I consider myself part of a community. I'm just giving an example where you've asked. I'm sure there are many more examples out there.
  • chejazi 11y ago
    http://www.downtownmonroemi.com/ http://www.downtownmonroemi.com/
  • orf 11y ago
    Escape to somewhere else then?
• teleclimber 11y ago
  As a DC kid I love that Fugazi gets a mention. It's true too: Ian MacKaye and crew ran a completely different kind of band than most others. It's the first time I realize how that distinction is analogous with DHH and Basecamp. Here's Ian MacKaye talking about his philosophy w/ a reporter: https://youtu.be/7zc2-T6LbOo?t=25m https://youtu.be/7zc2-T6LbOo?t=25m
  • jacquesm 11y ago
    They still owe me a new left eardrum. Paradiso, Amsterdam, long long long ago, I fixed one of the cables running from the stage to the sound pit (soldering is a handy skill, re-splicing a 20 conductor multi cable under a stage after someone cut it by wheeling a trolley over it is no fun) and got to stay for free afterwards.
  • dnfehren 11y ago
    The townhouse in DC where Minor Threat played their first show is now a $2 million property. http://noisey.vice.com/blog/own-the-house-where-minor-threat-played-their-first-show http://noisey.vice.com/blog/own-the-house-where-minor-threat... Seems like Dischord house is still owned by MacKaye.
• thaumaturgy 11y ago
  This message is unlikely to reach the people it most needs to reach. It's hard enough to change anyone's religion; harder still when their religion is money. It causes weird effects. In my area -- and in a number of other more rural communities I've visited over the last year -- there are still tons and tons of empty commercial spaces, staying empty for months (or years), all with "For Lease" signs in the window ... and all of them with absurdly inflated asking rates. For those whose god is "the market", there's a failure happening here that's directly affecting the ability of smaller businesses to start up or grow.
  • nickbauman 11y ago
    David Graeber's Debt, The First 5,000 Years ideas on this can be summarized that around 1500 or so, money gained autonomy from the leviathan. Where it once mattered that you could use money to get things and use things to get money, but when money is used only to get money, things go berserk. The result was someone like Cortez could conquer Mexico, gathering all the gold there was to be had, even enslaving thousands to work in mines, murdering thousands more by working them to death, and still be completely broke. Cortez was capitalized at a rate point where he could never break even.
    • littletimmy 11y ago
      Wait what is this about Cortez not being able to break even due to overcapitalization? It sounds really interesting. Would love if you could point me to a source where I can read more about this.
      • quadrangle 11y ago
        The poster you're replying to specifically referenced a book that discusses this and related topics, with tons of citations. You should read it, it's an amazing, important book.
      • borkabrak 11y ago
        Try David Graeber's Debt, The First 5,000 Years :)
• jarsin 11y ago
  Isn't a possible solution to this problem to make it easier and cheaper for others to take part in others success. Thus more companies/people will have a chance at being successful and more people will profit from their success.
• ctz 11y ago
  The songwriter point is a strange one. I don't think its a feature or result of today's commercialism. For example, see Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman -- the "Every song you love was written by the same two guys" of the 1950s/1960s.
• NPMaxwell 11y ago
  About not selling out: usually we make business decisions without knowing how things will turn out. We get advice. Market research is done. Even so, lots of business decisions are gambles -- especially entrepreneurial decisions. As long as you don't know which will work out better, selling out or not selling out, the estimated future benefit is greater for behaving well: if your project fails, you don't have to deal with shame on top of the failure.
• mbrock 11y ago
  I appreciate the analysis and sentiment but when looking at graphs of extreme net worth inequality it seems pretty pointless to just advise sympathetic people to "not sell out." People who will take that advice to heart will just end up not being the extremely rich people, and other people will end up there instead. It's good to increase the number of CEOs and powerful people who remain committed to values that benefit everyone. Still, without systemic change, the extremely rich and sociopathic will continue doing what they do, and extremely powerful corporations and banks will stay extremely powerful.
  • tdaltonc 11y ago
    I totally agree "do the right thing" is a special case of "just try harder". And "Try harder" is the solution to nothing. You have to change the system to make what-you-want-to-see the natural output of the system.
    • Kalium 11y ago
      Before that, you have to make sure that a system where what-you-want-to-see is the natural output is a system you're willing to accept. For any given thing, there are lots of truly abhorrent ways to produce it. There are a lot fewer morally acceptable ways. Sometimes none at all, subject to local moral conditions.
    • circlefavshape 11y ago
      ... and I think you'll find that "changing the system" is pretty much impossible. The world is not created, the world evolves. The best you can do is try and apply a selection pressure
      • mbrock 11y ago
        That's applicable 99% of the time, but discontinuities happen too. French and American revolutions, for example. On a smaller scale, think of key pieces of legislation, landmark supreme court cases, and so on.
      • tdaltonc 11y ago
• arbitrage314 11y ago
  I don't really follow the logic of the article. Humans have optimized for "money" for a long time, and it's produced a lot of good and a lot of bad. Overall, though, I'd say we're very much headed in the right direction. In the meantime, though, just try to be happy (as the article suggests).
• powera 11y ago
  What a load of BS. To just pick on one point: * There are only 250 Duane Reade's total (according to Wikipedia), there can't possibly be 400 in Manhattan. * Duane Reade as a chain is intricately associated with the city of New York, at least from the point of view of a San Franciscan. It is the local culture. * What's wrong with not having to walk a mile to go to a drug store? Having more locations helps build smaller neighborhoods. Nobody grows up wanting to own and operate their own drug store anymore. So chains do it instead. And I don't see how this is different than 50 people opening their own boutiques and destroying neighborhoods through gentrification. But I'm guessing the author would have a different opinion on that. also: this is the CEO of kickstarter? Isn't it slightly self-serving for him to say "people should be trying their own crazy things that they could never get money for before kickstarter"?
  • sankho 11y ago
    hey look, an appearance from the amazing mr. strawman, capable of ignoring an argument's essence in favor of contradicting lesser points to appear correct, yet totally out of context! Amazing!
    • powera 11y ago
      Well, I'm claiming that it's fundamentally a self-serving and dishonest narrative, so I kind of have to contradict the lesser points to prove the narrative wrong. As a different narrative, I don't see drug-store chains as a sign of communities dying, I see it as a sign of communities getting bigger. In a big city, there are lots of different chains, and in the small city that might have one drug store, they have a chain drug store and the community can focus on other things. Having a "local drug store" doesn't make a community. And having people raise millions of dollars for new episodes of a TV show from the 90s (MST3K) doesn't do anything for local communities.
      • Eric_WVGG 11y ago
        “having people raise millions of dollars for new episodes of a TV show from the 90s (MST3K) doesn't do anything for local communities” dude you just strawman’ed again
• zaidf 11y ago
  Minor counterargument: Banks, Walgreens, Duane Reed have done much to improve previously seedy neighborhoods by being able to invest in security and general upkeep of their storefront.
• littletimmy 11y ago
  In political ponerology (study of evil in politics, coming from the works of Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski), a pathocracy is defined to be a government where a small minority of psychopaths through the machinations of the system gain vast amounts of power and use normal people to their benefit. Homo-economicus is a psychopath. He values profit over people, uses people as resources, measures his own worth in money, harms the environment, has no deeper values, and so on. Insofar as our (capitalist) society rewards homo-economicus instead of shunning this miserable being, we are going to be ruled by a pathocracy.
  • Florin_Andrei 11y ago
    > Homo-economicus is a psychopath. He values profit over people, uses people as resources, measures his own worth in money, harms the environment, has no deeper values, and so on. This is known as a "rational agent" in some circles, lol. Just shows to what extremes people self-justify their actions and ideologies.
    • littletimmy 11y ago
      Without empathy or remorse, a "rational agent" is a sociopath.
      • denim_chicken 11y ago
        Empathy and remorse cause inefficiencies in the economy. A perfectly rational agent would have neither.
        • littletimmy 11y ago
          Therefore, he is a sociopath.
        • deleted 11y ago
          [deleted]
    • vlehto 11y ago
• mizchief2 11y ago
  you mean like a business?
• wespad 11y ago
  No mention of Hip-Hop?
• mindcrime 11y ago
  In the past 30 years, downtowns everywhere have been hollowed out by strip malls, chains, and real estate development. Local businesses that serve their communities are going extinct. This is just generic "appeal to nostalgia", romanticizing a bygone era that probably never existed "as such" in the first place, and desperately scraping for a way to attack modern capitalism. When chains displace "local businesses" they do so for a reason: they offer a combination of price/service/value/whatever, that the residents of the region favor to an extent that it makes the other businesses no longer viable. If people want "friendly neighborhood druggist who has lived and worked in the same spot for 70 years" they don't appear to be willing to pay for that. As for "the need for money to make more money"... yes, that's a real phenomenon, no doubt. There's a reason Pareto distributions occur and it probably has to do with "preferential attachment" and path dependence. And to be fair, pretty much nobody wants a world of deep economic inequality. BUT... you have to look at the flip-side... in many ways, it is easier and cheaper today to start a new enterprise and begin the path of "making more money" than it's ever been. It's been cheap to start a web-based SaaS offering for a while, and even though enterprises making physical goods are still expensive, the emergence of things like Kickstarter, Indie-go-go, etc. have made that world more accessible as well. If you want to argue that it's unfair that Joe Random Guy can't start a new oil refinery or steel mill or a nuclear power plant, then OK... you have a point. But has it ever been the case that just anybody could start something like that? And is it necessary for that to be the case? A diverse universe of record labels is steadily consolidating down. A shocking percentage of Top 40 hits are written by four Scandinavian men. And yet the universe of music that I have access to has been constantly expanding, thanks to the Internet, open source software, and advances in technology which make powerful tools for creating and recording music cheaper and cheaper. Don’t sell out your values, don’t sell out your community, don’t sell out the long term for the short term. Do something because you believe it’s wonderful and beneficial, not to get rich. Now this we can agree on. This is one reason we haven't tried to raise outside capital at Fogbeam. We want to build the kind of company we want to build, not necessarily the kind of company that VC's want to build. Always act with integrity. Really be clear about the things that drive you. Remember the lessons your parents and grandparents taught you about how to treat people and make sure your business lives up to that. Agreed. Earlier this year we became a Public Benefit Corporation. This means we are legally obligated to consider the impact of our decisions on society, not just our shareholders. It’s very different from the expectation that for profit companies maximize shareholder value above all. It acknowledges and embraces that you are a part of a larger community. Benefit Corporations are a great idea, and I hope North Carolina adopts a "B Corp" law eventually. We don't have the notion here currently, not as a legal form acknowledged by the State anyway. If any fellow North Carolinians are reading and want to work together on B corp advocacy here, ping me and let's get started.
• PythonicAlpha 11y ago
  I think, that having (idealistic) principles and regard them as being above of money, is very important. Today, it seems, that many people just have one principle that holds above anything else: Money. I think, this way, we ultimately sell out humanity.
  • cryoshon 11y ago
    Humanity is useless; it can't be manipulated or traded to increase profit. And as such, we arrive at the present.
    • PythonicAlpha 11y ago
      Some day, everything will belong to only a few people and the rest of us will be their slaves. But maybe at this time or some day before, some might recognize, that living on profits alone is not possible.
• hackaflocka 11y ago
  It's called Anglo-style capitalism. It's not perfect. But it's better than every other system that's ever been tried.
  • Apocryphon 11y ago
    Better than Scandinavian social democracy? Better than German social market economy? Better than East Asian Tiger hypergrowth-capitalism-but-with-strong-government-intervention?
    • clarkmoody 11y ago
      Go back and analyze how Scandinavia got the capital to launch its massive social welfare programs. Same for Germany. Who did China trade with in order to become wealthy?
      • Apocryphon 11y ago
        Well, Norway has a massive sovereign trust fund derived from North Sea oil, so it's an outlier. The other Scandinavian nations began creating their social welfare systems since at least the 1930s, if not earlier.
• untilHellbanned 11y ago
  Ironic article being from the CEO of Kickstarter, one of the biggest success stories of the last decade. All this talk of altruism, Zuckerberg and Gates too, is trivial when you have it all. The true measure is when you, like most people, behave when you have nothing to lose and nobody is watching.
  • danans 11y ago
    Don't you mean "have something to lose"?
• blazespin 11y ago
  You mean, capitalism?
• vijayr 11y ago
  There is an Indian restaurant near my home and a bookshop - I really like both of them but I've been going there less and less. The restaurant added more tables, so during the buffet, it is impossible to walk 10 steps to your table. People give death stares, spill food etc. The bookshop added more shelves with books and now only one person can walk between shelves instead of two. What used to be a pleasant experience has now turned into an annoying one at both places. Result is I get my books from Amazon. This might be a trivial and stupid example, but when everything is optimized for revenues and profits it really is demoralizing.
  • theseatoms 11y ago
    Sounds like they aren't properly optimizing if they're alienating loyal customers. Or maybe it's worth risking the business of loyal customers in order to attract more marginal customers. Btw, is this Indian restaurant called "Twitter"?
• theseatoms 11y ago
  Good thing risk-free interest rates are 0%.
• RangerScience 11y ago
  A remark: There's a fundamental unsolved (or, poorly solved, or, we don't like the solution enough) civilizational problem: I have a new society. Where do I put it? And a longer comment: I read at thing that suggested that companies with "noble purpose" make hand over fist more money than companies with a sole profit motive. One way to take this is that, by operating under different goals, you become unpredictable to the established power, and the "OODA loop" concept teaches us that's a solid way to win. Arguably, against a better positioned opponent who can absorb you, playing by different rules is the only way to win. Another way to take this is to pull the idea that "money" is only a measurement of "debt", and is thus inherently unsustainable because it measures a non-finite thing in a world of finite things. And so if you make decisions by maximizing an unsustainable sense of depletion, it stands to reason you'll end up making a depleted place. --- Of course, you can also read all this as "convincing you not to play our game, so we don't have to compete with you"... akin to "stability is good because I'm on top!"... but that just goes back to "need to play by different rules if I'm to win".
• 6stringmerc 11y ago
  In music, 80% of the concert industry is owned by Ticketmaster. A diverse universe of record labels is steadily consolidating down. A shocking percentage of Top 40 hits are written by four Scandinavian men. Yup, love that he included this tidbit. A little dramatic, but practical. They figured out the formula, so they're a sound investment. Even Adele has a track with Max Martin on her new album. If there's a really cogent indicator of 'wealth disparity' there's nothing quite like looking into the "Top 1%" of music acts versus the rest. Not that music has, you know, traditionally been a great way to make a living, but the numbers are really exploitative in a lot of ways. It's quite indicative of the money first mentality I think, for music (and venues) to be consolidated (or allowed to do so) in such a racketeering fashion. Number 1: Don’t sell out...Do something because you believe it’s wonderful and beneficial, not to get rich. Oh, wow. I needed this. Mostly because it's such a futile thing to try and be independent as a musician and make a living...or really any money...but it's a personal decision, one based on principles. Glad he at least mentioned this concept for consideration.
• RangerScience 11y ago
  Moar comments! If you consider a profit-maximizing corporation a paper-clip maximizing AI, it's a hostile AI that's bad for people. Then you take a look at Public Benefit Corporation, and what you could say goes on, is that instead of using "profit" as a measurement of success, it's a binary answer to sustainability. If a public benefit operation is profitable, it can continue - but it doesn't matter how profitable it is, because that's not the success criteria. Another interesting place to think about this is "profit as A/B testing metric". Are user signups really what you want, or do you simply require user signups to sustain, but what you want are, say, user-submitted content?
• Eleutheria 11y ago
  Money is a medium of exchange. The more you produce the more you exchange value for value. The problem is not money and it has never been. The problem is power. Power to leech and mooch from the producers. Enter the state.
• leelin 11y ago
  I used to wonder why Midtown Manhattan had so many bank branches, especially the redundant branches a mere block or two away. How could that be the highest and best use of prime commercial store frontage in a competitive market? I figured out in 2009, when I was working at a hedge fund trying to bid on the assets of bankrupt banks post financial crisis. Basically, every branch loses money to gain depositors. All the fees on monthly accounts, safety deposit boxes, ATMs, cashiers checks, etc. do not offset the cost of the office and employees. However, if the loss is small compared to the volume of deposit money the branch attracts, then the bank headquarters has "borrowed" money at a very low cost. I think a typical suburban Countrywide or Washington Mutual branch was losing about $100K/yr but had deposits of $20M; not bad at all considering Fed Funds had been around 5.25% until fall of 2007, and that having the capital was the life blood necessary to do all the profitable operations (originating mortgages, credit cards, student loans, EDIT: meet regulatory capital requirements, etc). In Midtown, those numbers might be multiplied many fold, so very few retail stores can compete and stay profitable.
  • devy 11y ago
    Very informative for people from fields.
  • roymurdock 11y ago
    This is fascinating - I had never thought about commercial banks making obfuscated investments in real estate by opening branches in hot markets before. Whatever money they lose on wages, construction, depreciation, amortization, overhead, etc. they make up on the appreciating underlying value of the land, increased brand presence (read: expensive advertising), and increased ability to secure federal funds due to higher assets as collateral on their balance sheet. This could make for an interesting leading indicator for a real estate cooldown, and even a recession if extrapolated out: When commercial banks start closing down commercial branches, we can conclude that either a) value generated by the appreciation of the real estate is slowing down or b) the value of the deposits in the area is not growing fast enough (people are not saving, with banks at least). Also, it's worrying to see the that the true value of a branch is that of an investment and an asset against which to secure cheap federal loans. That these unprofitable branches exist for these purposes implies a huge misdirection of resources and energy from sustainable demand creation to rent-seeking, speculation, and poor fiscal policy that incentivizes banks to prop up hot real estate markets in order to secure Fed funding. The Citibank branch that I use will be closing in January...
• rphv 11y ago
  Money is the most powerful mechanism for influencing human behavior that mankind has ever devised. The phenomena this article describes (banks in New York, chain outlets, etc.) are emergent - they arise from the aggregate behavior of lots of ordinary people working (at least in part) for money. If the goal is to change the emergent phenomena, then it's necessary to give the average individual an incentive that's more powerful than money. I don't see that here.
• pg_is_a_butt 11y ago
  you get pg
• shmerl 11y ago
  What a horrible culture that is.
• codingdave 11y ago
  " 'I might delete Facebook today.', 'I’ll go back to my Razr phone.', 'Maybe I’ll try homesteading.' But to do any of these means becoming a ghost to your community." As someone who has deleted Facebook and moved to our own small homestead, this is totally untrue. On the contrary, I live in a much more vibrant community now, as I barter with the neighbors, trading our eggs, dairy, and honey, for whatever they have/do. I know almost every single person who lives near me. We hire their kids to help in the summers. A few women hang out at our place every Tuesday and knit. We have friends come crash with us for weeks or months at a time, exchanging room and board for helping around the homestead. And I work from home, ironically making more money than I did when working in an office. (Although I actually save less because I keep building chicken coops and solar arrays, etc.). In any case, I feel far more connected to my local community now than I ever did before we started this lifestyle.
  • j-b 11y ago
    Sounds really cool. Where do you live?
    • codingdave 11y ago
      Central Utah - check back a month or so in my comment history and there was a more detailed discussion about all this...
  • elliotec 11y ago
    I believe you. But at the same time, that is a huge jump that very few people are willing to take simply because that's so against the societal grain. You're living the life in a lot of ways, but most people are too risk-averse to even consider it.
• pjlegato 11y ago
  The author seems to think this wealth accumulation dynamic is somehow unique to free market capitalism, produced by a capitalist culture that explicitly values money, economic efficiency, and wealth accumulation. It's not. Every culture and economic system that has ever been put into practice in all of human history has produced the exact same wealth accumulation dynamic. The main difference is that in the systems other than free-market capitalism, significant wealth accumulation is not merely "difficult" for ordinary people, but actually "impossible" if you're not a member of the tiny ruling circle. At least under free market capitalism, as an ordinary person you do have a shot, however unlikely it may be.
• snissn 11y ago
  Was anyone else really upset to see the photo of the TD Ameritrade that replaced Mars bar?
• zhyder 11y ago
  I think customers have much more influence here than business owners do. If more customers prefer shopping at local stores than at chains, local stores will flourish. For better or for worse, most customers today prefer the lower prices and consistent experience of shopping at big chains. It's the same in other areas. More people seem to prefer blockbuster movie sequels than original indie films: whether you're a profit-motivated studio exec or a struggling artist, you want your work to be seen by an audience. A minority of customers chooses local/eclectic/independent: not sure whether this minority is growing or shrinking.
• ilaksh 11y ago
  Money is actually a very powerful technology. I hope people will start to think of this as a high-tech problem. We can improve the concept of money. Seems like a lot of people think the answer is just to give it up. But that is simplistic and discounting the power of a universal trading system. I think the answer is to really understand how money functions in our society and the parts that work and the parts that don't and come up with an evolution of the concept that incorporates technology into society and works better. For example: bitcoin, Ethereum, some kind of holistic schema for tracking resources which would make us less dependent upon money and make it easier to plan. Maybe have a few categories of money for different things. If we can insert better technology (than basic money) to mediate society, maybe we can create an opt-in society that is more fair, efficient, and still evolves freely. But don't just say "money sucks" and throw it out, and unthinkingly resort to technocommunism. Its kind of like when people will give up their Christian faith and then decide they should become hedonists. We need to think through things more and really synthesize ideas. Integrating technology into society can make things like universal point systems (money) more practical and more fair.
• pnathan 11y ago
  The idea of 'selling out' itself is an artifact of Romanticism, combined with the social idealisms of the 60s. It's not thinking very deeply to advise people not to sell out, there are more intricate things going on than the romantic idealization of "let's be poor and happy". I also want to point out that it's a bit irritating to be told to not strive harder by someone who's already got "FU" money.
• kumarski 11y ago
  In the USA, we have: 7000 taxi medallions. 8 Major Film Studio Companies. (‘The Majors’) 15 Large Banks. 3 Major Radio Stations. 3 Major Labels. 2 Major Ticketing companies. 2 Major broadband providers. 2 Major telcos. ~150 MVNOs. (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) 10 Major Movie Theater Chains. 4 Big Accounting Companies. (“The Big 4.”) 10 Major Grocery Companies 7 Major Financial Analytics Companies – Terminal 5 Credit Card Companies(Visa, MC, Mastercard, Amex, Discover)
• deleted 11y ago
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• Dowwie 11y ago
  I wonder what the meetings between Union Square and Kickstarter are like..
• reedlaw 11y ago
  Interesting that the book mentioned, Not for Bread Alone, retails for over $2700 on Amazon 1. 1. http://www.amazon.com/Not-Bread-Alone-Konosuke-Matsushita/dp/0425141330 http://www.amazon.com/Not-Bread-Alone-Konosuke-Matsushita/dp...
• j2kun 11y ago
  I like the message, but I also think it cuts both ways. Take Chicago for example. When I moved to Chicago five years ago, Wicker Park was the "hipster" neighborhood, where many of the exciting cultural events (at least for people in my age group, young 20 somethings) were happening. By the next year, Wicker Park had become too trendy and gentrified, and all the hipsters moved further west to Logan Square. Today Logan Square is too upscale, and the hipsters have moved south into Pilsen, forcing many of the local hispanic families out of the neighborhood because of rising prices. Now there are organic juice bars sprouting up in Pilsen and the gentrification process is starting anew. This is almost exactly the pattern described in the article, except it's the people who want authentic communities that are causing the problem! It's a catch-22: if you don't like your community you can try to go elsewhere, but a few years after you do you will hate your vapid community again. In this case it's the drive for culture that causes monoculture. Once something is seen as authentic people flock to it and it becomes trite. How can you deal with that?
  • m_mueller 11y ago
    Maybe the question that should be asked is why a large part of the population can't afford to live in a hip place in town, so what's left at the end is only rich people and banks. I think there's two aspects to this: (1) Income inequality and (2) smart zoning laws. I think (1) has been discussed ad nauseam but for (2) see Japan as an example: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.jp/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.jp/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html. I live in Tokyo and I have to say - while there is still the business district that noone can afford and the gentrification process is somewhat visible in some places (however IMO slower than elsewhere), it's really not too hard to live in a place with lots of small business, shops, nice restaurants and locals to talk to. We pay <1000$ rent and have a three small supermarkets, ~15 good restaurants, 2 train stations, a recreational park with big pond and all kinds of small shops do get whatever supply you need, all within 10min walking distance. And this place is far from exceptional in Tokyo, this city is basically a huge spread of small towns grown together and connected with a train system on steroids. And I think zoning laws is probably one of the most important influences on why this happens - basically you can build an expensive house, a cheap apartment building, a restaurant, a medium sized supermarket, an estate agency and a fish tank supply shop all in the same block here - and that's also what actually happens. I've never seen this sort of chaotic mix in Europe or the US, but I think this is exactly what you need for a thriving community that stays this way.
• owly 11y ago
  I don't understand why deleting Facebook is difficult. It may be the easiest way to opt out. It's no more difficult than abandoning corporate media. You don't need it. Connect with real people who you care about in the real world.
• peter303 11y ago
  Some hipster jest rediscovered capitalism. A system built on constrained mutual greed. It tends to make the big get bigger. Not only old style industries like farming and banking but new ones like sftware too.
• cmmender12 11y ago
  Funny, coming from a guy who has made millions of dollars in his career. I agree, once I make a billion dollars I'm all for not being so focused on money anymore ;) I think his argument would be a lot more convincing if he was not rich. It's sort of like when Stanford/Harvard graduates say that we should abolish elite universities and that the degrees are worthless. Easy to say for the guy who already graduated from there. I totally agree, as soon as I graduate from Stanford, I will go around saying how it's not worth much. But until then, I'll try like crazy to get in. Thoughts?
• platz 11y ago
  I wonder why Adbusters died out, this is basicallynthe same message
• lionhearted 11y ago
  Some good points in here, but the points about chains/franchises is misguided. I've been to many countries. If you go to China, Vietnam, Colombia, Eastern Europe, you can find plenty of places without mainstream chains and lots of local shops. You know what? Most of them suck. Bad selections, overpriced, trying to cheat you on change, rat droppings or layers of dust on top of a variety of food products... ... I know if I go to Duane Reade or Chipotle, the food or medicine I buy will be legit, unexpired, and without any egregious violation. If I buy a pair of jeans at Walmart or Target and they rip in the first week I own them, I can take them back. Chain banks mostly suck, and credit unions or online banks are far better. But for food, clothing, and medicine, chains are a godsend. You don't get cheated, everything is decent quality, and clean. If you buy something and it's broken, you can take it back. Not so in most of the world. (And also, many of the small shops locally owned aren't owned by local people just getting by -- they're owned by local bosses, who are just as callous as the archetypical big corporation, but much less effective at delivering to customers and much less accountable.) Liked the rest of the article, and do admire companies that operate differently like REI. But lionizing small disorganized ineffective dirty shops is a miss; Chipotle and Duane Reade are godsends compared to what you'd get otherwise. If you don't believe it, check out any developing country before chain stores move in. It's not a better state of affairs.
• deleted 11y ago
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• dschiptsov 11y ago
  BTW, this very style of writing - shallow meme-juggling is also very telling. There are guys like Sartre and Camous or even Henry V. Miller and his immitators, who have wrote volumes on this timeless theme - how the world is dominated by money-chasing mediocrity and absolute futility of this endless struggling and caused by it suffering. A few very good books has been written about realization of this futility and suffering. So called social responsibility is also as old as humanity. Big Tibetan sects, which in fact were feudal landlords, used a concept of socially oriented Bodhisattvas, invented by pundits in Nalanda, in order to justify why every village should feed them, so they exist to benefit the whole society, which is just another Utopia, because each member of society is optimizing for very selfish, biological goals of survival and reproduction and protection of progeny. In the context of a CEO blog post such populism is just the same kind of hypocrisy - socially responsible money making is no different from socially responsible authoritarian regime. There is no need to protect or nurse a society. Just following of some evolved social laws, which could be found in the basis of every religion, and not intervening or abusing free (self-balancing) markets, which is, by the way, is idea as old as kicking speculators and money lenders out of the church, is enough. Society would take care of itself, as most of rural societies still do. The 'cure' for society, as it have been found millenia ago, is to behave yourself according to the natural laws, and everything else would follow. No amount of governing or policing will help. Behavior of each actor is what society is. This, BTW, is exactly what America before corporations and big government used to be - a self-balancing society of free people with Constitution as the definition of its structure.
• MichaelMoser123 11y ago
  Isn't unrestrained profit seeking what modernity is all about? Pre-modern societies had all sorts of customary/institutional restraints on profit seeking. * The classical Greek had their notions of temperance * Romans had the notion that a proper aristocrat needs to own an agricultural estate, idea of civil virtues (these cost a lot of money) and that one has to spend the money on a huge estate with a court of slaves (familia urbana) * China had their Imperial bureaucracy * the European middle ages had corporatism/guilds in the cities Once these restraints were gone we entered modernity. (here is an article why China didn't do modernity, despite having had all the big inventions that supposedly brought us capitalism - like the printing press, gun powder, paper money, big advances in materials, a fleet that discovered America. The authors say the structure of institutions was restraining entrepreneurship and progress : http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/1570101.pdf http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/157...
• vincent_s 11y ago
  > In tech, many investors’ first question for entrepreneurs > is “what’s your exit strategy?” "When we made the investment, it was decided that we'd keep it quiet for a while." [1] [1] https://www.usv.com/blog/kickstarter https://www.usv.com/blog/kickstarter Also interesting: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/union-square-ventures/exits https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/union-square-venture...
• galfarragem 11y ago
  >>Behind this dynamic is a monoculture of money optimizing for more money. That's capitalism, what's the fuss about it? It's not possible to have only the good of capitalism and the good of communism. The bad parts will come in soon or later. The "don't be evil" approach has already proved to be BS so we must choose what do we really want. An interesting experiment is East Europe, a capitalist society that uses some good communist laws. E.g. Student used to have a large discount everywhere, allowing everybody to study. Discounts are getting smaller and smaller till the day that they will disapeer. Or people that couldn't be fired after some age. Even if people don't want to loose these policies, it's a matter of time. It's very hard to have the best of both worlds.
• hellodevnull 11y ago
  >No matter their importance to their community, they can’t stay if they can’t pay >Investors make money, franchises notch a new location, and the neighborhood suffers a significant death. What are these businesses that are so great to the community yet don't make any money? If everyone's taking their business to franchises it's because they (the customers) prefer them and franchises provider a better service. Seems like the author just longs for independent stores and the like simply because he dislikes corporate culture, and would rather pay more to avoid it.