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A company's goal should be profit. Why is profit a bad word so often? They aren't abusing customers or employees to get that profit... both of those groups re

• specialist 10y ago
  My libertarian bestie teases me "The problem with you Liberals is you can't tolerate hypocrisy." No one cares if Whole Foods makes piles of cash. Just don't pee on my leg and tell me its raining.
  • ambicapter 10y ago
    Is he saying we'd be better off tolerating hypocrisy?
    • jsolson 10y ago
      I'm not the friend (nor am I a libertarian), but YES. Don't tolerate hypocrisy for hypocrisy's sake, but recognize when it's pragmatic to tolerate it to either move things in the correct direction or simply to limit how far they slide in the wrong direction.
      • pshposh 10y ago
        Could you provide an example of such a situation? How do people get this wrong?
        • specialist 10y ago
          Negotiating with some one who is both anti abortion and pro execution. Do you refuse to work with that person (eg prison reform, women's health)? Or do you focus on shared interests, win/win?
          • WillPostForFood 10y ago
            That's inconsistency, not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is someone who is anti-abortion, but would get an abortion because they had a trip to Hawaii planned, or is anti-execution, but is pushing a prosecutor to go for the death penalty in the case of their child's murder. But I do agree that there is a case to be made to work those people, if their views align with yours, even though they are personally hypocrites. On the other hand, maybe not the most trustworthy allies.
            • specialist 10y ago
              Thank you. I've been chewing on this. You're right. I need to learn to see the difference, and maybe be less judgmental. It's almost inconceivable to me that someone(s) can be both anti-abortion and pro-execution without some deeper, darker, cynical motivator. Huh. Again, thank you.
              • deleted 10y ago
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              • WillPostForFood 10y ago
                Can I ask you a question then? If you feel there is a conflict in being anti-abortion and pro-execution, wouldn't that equally apply to people who are pro-abortion and anti-execution? I don't think there is a conflict with either position because they are vastly different scenarios, and neither side is basing their argument on an absolute position on the value of all life in all circumstances. A good example would be: Someone who opposes kidnapping, but supports imprisoning criminals. Those positions are not in conflict, even though prison is just legal kidnapping.
                • 10y ago
        • jsolson 10y ago
          First, let me point you to where such tolerance has been effective at advancing agendas (note that in neither case do I agree with or support the agendas). My preferred concrete example, simply because of how staggeringly effective tolerating hypocrisy was at getting a resoundingly unpopular law to become the law of the land is American Prohibition. During the lead-up to prohibition in the United States one of the most successful lobbyists was a man named Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League. He would work with or endorse any candidate that supported a dry agenda, and he'd work to replace those that didn't with those that did. This included candidates who were, themselves, barely-functional alcoholics. They would drink while meeting with him (he himself was truly a teetotaler as far as we know) while discussing the very legislation that would make acquiring alcohol illegal. He took it all in stride as long as they voted the right way. Despite the perceived success of the wets in attaching a 7-year limit on time-to-ratification for the 18th amendment, it passed the required number of state houses in less than two years. For a more modern example I direct you to Republican's willingness to re-elect "family values" candidates who support and push through anti-LGBTQ legislation but who have themselves been caught in flagrante delicto. I find such laws reprehensible, but I cannot deny the effectiveness of the right in passing them, in part due to a willingness to tolerate effective but hypocritical legislators. In terms of where I believe a failure to tolerate hypocrisy has resulted in net loses for progressive causes, I'd point to politicians with strongly progressive voting histories are pilloried and their political careers are summarily executed because they turn out to be corrupt, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. If their voting history and the legacy they're leaving behind is a progressive one (and stays that way), who cares if they're only pursuing it because they know it will get them re-elected? Unless you can find a candidate who will produce a better net effect, stick with the flawed bigot. Concretely, take Hillary Clinton after the primaries[0]. I saw it argued that she was a hypocrite for taking millions in speaking fees from big banks while talking about protecting the little guy. She may well be a hypocrite (and her banking voting history isn't great), but the platform she was running on and much of the rest of her voting history are solidly progressive. The number of votes lost due to perceived hypocrisy probably wouldn't have swayed that contest, but more broadly I see it in the same category of being idealistic to a fault.
    • jwmerrill 10y ago
      People waste a lot of time arguing over charges of hypocrisy. In practice, it ends up being a way of shifting the conversation from the argument that someone is making to the person who is making it. Hypocrisy isn't great, but practically everyone has been guilty of it in one way or another. So it's an easy charge to make that gets everyone worked up. I don't know if we should tolerate hypocrisy, but I'd be in favor of talking about it less in favor of more direct and productive arguments.
    • specialist 10y ago
      He's asking: Do you want to win? Or do you just want to be right?
  • kiliantics 10y ago
    The thing is liberals have a lot of their own hypocrisy to answer for too so I'd say they are actually pretty tolerant of it, just selectively so.
• WaxProlix 10y ago
  > The company's only goal is profit and this is very evident when you hear their libertarian CEO speak. > You can want to make as much profit as possible while ALSO doing the right thing ethically. OP even said that their ONLY goal was profit. Of course as a company in a society like ours you have to make profit. It's when that becomes a priority that obscures all others that people find it distasteful.
• wpietri 10y ago
  > A company's goal should be profit. No. You've confused means with purpose. A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the investors a fair return. And any company needs enough profit to reinvest in growth. But profit alone isn't a sustaining motivation. One entrepreneur I know sold his first company back in the 90s for >$100m. As he was working on his next venture, he said, "Profit isn't the point. Profit is permission to continue." The purpose of a company is generally to create value for a given audience in particular ways, often ones that have a broader impact. For example, the purpose of the New York Times is to inform readers about the things that matter to them and to the world. They do that because they see journalism as necessary to a healthy society, a healthy world. If you approach the same audience and tools with a goal of pure profit, you end up with things like supermarket tabloids, viral clickbait, and Macedonian fake news farms. Those have a much higher ROI than real journalism; they're going to be much more profitable. By your theory, they're better companies. But they aren't.
  • sverige 10y ago
    >> One entrepreneur I know sold his first company back in the 90s for >$100m. As he was working on his next venture, he said, "Profit isn't the point. Profit is permission to continue." Easy to say profit doesn't matter once you've cleared $100mm.
    • wpietri 10y ago
      Of course if I hadn't mentioned how well his previous business did, somebody would have suggested the person knew nothing about business. And since you missed it, let me be clear: he didn't say profit doesn't matter. He said profit wasn't the point. His previous business was quite profitable, but that's not why he did it.
  • davidivadavid 10y ago
    The most profitable companies in the world tend to create a lot of value. If you want to create a company seeking "pure profit", you'd be well advised to create a lot of value. Get-rich-quick scams sometimes work, but they're not scalable, and hardly ever "much more profitable" than solid businesses.
• mcguire 10y ago
  That seems to be the problem from the article. Whole Foods had seen its profits drop due to competition, so it has to ditch the "do the right thing ethically" to maintain its profit margin.
• kiliantics 10y ago
  Not all companies are for-profit. And, to some people, the very definition of profit is the extra money you can get by paying workers only so much while charging customers that much more. That is to say, profit is the stolen excess value of labour that you never paid back to the worker. So in this perspective, profit is by definition gained from the exploitation of worker or consumer or both. There are plenty examples where companies will profit even though they are "going too far." Just think of all the profit made from war while the majority of people disagree with the war. Your ethics of "doing the right thing" while making as much profit as possible are also subjective if you consider the definition of profit that I proposed above. I know I'm saying all this in a forum based around startups but I think it's worth pointing out.
  • orangecat 10y ago
    So in this perspective, profit is by definition gained from the exploitation of worker or consumer or both. That is a perspective, yes. It's also ridiculous zero-sum thinking contradicted by both theory and reality. The iPhone has resulted in hundreds of millions of happy customers, and tens of thousands of high paying jobs. But apparently all of those people are "exploited" because Apple makes a profit.
    • kiliantics 10y ago
      But you can't prove that this would not have been possible if Apple were non-profit. Sure, it probably would have been unlikely but this is because non-profits are usually less thrilled about hiring de-facto slave labour in China or elsewhere on the supply chain in order to produce an iPhone at a price where large profits can be made.
• edblarney 10y ago
  "A company's goal should be profit." One of a companies goals may be profit, but it may not be it's only goal. When companies engage intelligently, they an create 'win win' scenarios. When they don't they can create zero-sum - or worse - can profit by actually destroying net value.