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Almost wanted to downvote you for the pedantic tone, decided to comment instead. What you are saying is not at all self-evident or settled. It's true that busin

Almost wanted to downvote you for the pedantic tone, decided to comment instead. What you are saying is not at all self-evident or settled. It's true that business models that create value without being predatory are possible, and surely even exist in great numbers, but to say that this is the case most of the time... That's a defensible but very much controversial statement, don't pretend otherwise.

downandout 9y ago
I was not trying to be pedantic. In free market societies, most businesses grow by delivering value to their customers. Otherwise, nobody would frequent them and they would die off quickly. Again, there are exceptions to this, such as industries that depend on addiction - alcohol/tobacco/gambling businesses, for example, create value only for their owners at the expense of both their customers and society at large. But it holds true as a general rule that businesses either create value or die.
- m_fayer 9y ago
  You reacted to the following phrase: > that their success in this society will rely on using and stepping on others who will now have less as a result, if not in their own community then in the international stage. by saying that if the teenager in question properly understood economics they would understand that "most... businesses become successful by creating value, not siphoning it from others" and therefore not hold the opinion in that quote. Your reading of the teenager's statement is, it seems, willfully narrow. It's true that if most businesses simply screwed their customers, they wouldn't survive long, with the exceptions that you mention. But I'm sure that's not what the kid in question meant, teenagers these days are smart cookies. They know that you can treat your customers well while screwing them sneakily (productize their data), screwing their community (use market dominance to force suppliers to lower prices, thereby accelerating offshoring and killing jobs), screwing some other community (locking in cheap resource contracts by bribing weak governments and thus fanning corruption), and the list goes on and on like that.

downandout 9y ago

I was not trying to be pedantic. In free market societies, most businesses grow by delivering value to their customers. Otherwise, nobody would frequent them and they would die off quickly. Again, there are exceptions to this, such as industries that depend on addiction - alcohol/tobacco/gambling businesses, for example, create value only for their owners at the expense of both their customers and society at large. But it holds true as a general rule that businesses either create value or die.

m_fayer 9y ago
You reacted to the following phrase: > that their success in this society will rely on using and stepping on others who will now have less as a result, if not in their own community then in the international stage. by saying that if the teenager in question properly understood economics they would understand that "most... businesses become successful by creating value, not siphoning it from others" and therefore not hold the opinion in that quote. Your reading of the teenager's statement is, it seems, willfully narrow. It's true that if most businesses simply screwed their customers, they wouldn't survive long, with the exceptions that you mention. But I'm sure that's not what the kid in question meant, teenagers these days are smart cookies. They know that you can treat your customers well while screwing them sneakily (productize their data), screwing their community (use market dominance to force suppliers to lower prices, thereby accelerating offshoring and killing jobs), screwing some other community (locking in cheap resource contracts by bribing weak governments and thus fanning corruption), and the list goes on and on like that.