8 ms·

For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the en

For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the end they will do everything for money.

swiley 8y ago
I was under the impression that pre 20th century companies just existed as a legal and organizational convenience in order to help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit.
- treerock 8y ago
  I'm curious. I've read a few (mostly fictional) accounts of early companies, and the drive for profit seemed stronger (if anything) than it is now.
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    Companies began as a means to have an endeavour progress while the people involved changed [0]. The nature of the endeavour could be profit, but by no means had to be. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#History
  - adventured 8y ago
    I've read just about every non-fiction account I can get my hands on about business in the ~1850-1930 era. The drive for profit during the industrial revolution, was radically stronger than it is today. The giants of industry back then openly lusted after success, it was culturally acceptable to behave that way (right up to the point where you were dominant, then the people turned against you). They made no apologies for the all-out pursuit of profit back then. Rockefeller dressed it up slightly, by proclaiming that god wanted him to be rich, that to be wealthy was glorious. The so called robber barons lived in openly ostentatious ways that today's rich in the US would mostly never dream of; today most of them go out of their way to pretend they're not so rich and to hide it. Open shows of wealth today are considered closer to vulgarity, crude, disgusting, etc. Back then, it was far less widely believed that wealth was stolen from 'the people'; today, it's widely believed that the rich are all thieves in some considerable manner. There was no welfare state at all, income taxes were extremely low or non-existent, so the accumulation of wealth happened far faster. Companies often paid extremely high dividends 10 to 20 times higher than is normal today. Tactics, when it came to dealing with competition, were far beyond anything you see today. There were few regulations in the US, so companies were free to devise all manners of schemes to best their competitors. The treatment of labor in the pursuit of profit, was similarly far more brutal (there's really no comparison, Amazon's warehouse workers are treated like kings compared to sweatshop workers back then).
    - dieterrams 8y ago
      Do you have a short list of book recommendations?
- quantummkv 8y ago
  The East India Company (amongst many others) did heinous stuff solely to make a profit. If anything, the drive for profit is a little less now.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    I'm not sure the drive is less so much as PR is a thing, better regulation is a thing and the internet makes corporations misdeeds much more transparent. This is one of the reasons among many I regard the decline in proper journalism as so worrying.
- roenxi 8y ago
  If anyone knows what I'm trying to say and can put it in clearer words that'd be lovely, I think I'm missing an important linking idea here. Anyway... Imagine there are two paths from A to B (the left and right path). 100 people walk from A to B. Half take the left and half the right, and none of them have any information not in this paragraph. There are wolves on the left path. Everyone who travels it gets eaten. Now, at B, we have 50 people. They all chose the right path voluntarily, they all made a choice. None of them knew about the wolves though. How do we catagorise this situation in term of having and not having made a "real" choice? I argue that in practice, whatever the people were thinking when they chose B was irrelevant, because they didn't know the thing that actually mattered and they didn't have a proxy variable for it. With that setup, I'd argue companies that "help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit" are a lot like my right path, in that the people may not have been focused on maximising profits, but if they didn't achieve them they wouldn't have lasted long. By evolution, there will be a decided drift towards companies maximising profits even if all the individuals actually making the choices think they are doing something real (or I suppose, the converse where they think that their job is meaningless).
  - jackpirate 8y ago
    This is something like "survivorship bias", but that term is usually applied to extreme outliers like CEOs rather that average case people like you're doing.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  That's not right. USA Antitrust law was invented around 1900 to fight excesses is service of profile. A corporation could be chartered for any reason. What is true is that in the early 19th century there was a legal pretense that corporations had to justify their charter to the government in order to be approved and renewed. One of the very first corporations in USA was Alexander Hamilton's bank, that ran a water utility as a front operation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhattan_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhattan_Company The old days weren't as honorable as the stories whitewash. But not-just-for-profit corporations have existed for a long time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification... is a modern trend.
- aikah 8y ago
  > I was under the impression that pre 20th century companies just existed as a legal and organizational convenience in order to help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit. You might want to have a look at an history book then. Companies had slaves, got kids working in mines, got to use the government to shout their workers who rebelled because they had no rights whatsoever, or just straight up used private armies. It was all pre 20th century already. If all this was not solely to make a profit, I don't know what it was. Furthermore the great majority of big ventures were family driven. There were not formal associations between "people with similar goals" who weren't blood related.
artellectual 8y ago
That has been the answer for last era. I think that’s why tech workers are starting to ask what we’re building it for. Because we’re here at this point because building “for money” is no longer good enough. Because what’s the point of having money when we’re cancer ridden and polluting our planet, and despite living in a rich planet people are starving, and the very resources that feed us are being destroyed. What’s the point of a pile of money when there is nothing else left?
- tiredwired 8y ago
  Sounds like an opportunity for someone to build the tech to cure cancer and filter pollution.
  - j7ake 8y ago
    Cure for cancer involves molecular biology and filtering pollution involves heterogeneous catalysis. Where does programming come into play in any direct way to these solutions? I understand that tech is involved indirectly, but so is the coffee that is served in laboratories to keep scientists working.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      Human Genome Project? Tunmmor detecting AI? Global weather simulations?
    - justinclift 8y ago
      > Where does programming come into play in any direct way to these solutions? * Literally every piece of lab equipment that uses any kind of controller/control board (most of them)... has needed programming of one sort of another. Hmmm, with the exception of older analog gear maybe (decades ago?). * Every single piece of data collection, storage, analysis, and control software is created through programming. * Even communication of results among team members, to management, to the public, often requires programming.
      - 8y ago
EliRivers 8y ago
The current obsession that companies exist solely for making money for shareholders is an historical aberration. If that's still the common view in a hundred years or so, it will carry more weight.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > The current obsession that companies exist solely for making money for shareholders Making money for shareholders is an instrument to secure long term/regular investment. It's not the "end goal", and almost no company's mission is "to make money". Money is just the blood stream that enables everything else.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > It's not the "end goal", and almost no company's mission is "to make money". Sure seems that way, when every decision is optimized towards making money short-term. I think the more correct model of most companies would be money-focused entities that through path dependence ended up in the market sector they're in. That is, the actual thing they're doing is an artifact of history and is abstracted away for actual operations.
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    Yet there is a common belief that companies are legally obliged to make enriching shareholders their only priority.
panic 8y ago
Say I have an idea for how I want the world to be. I don't care about money at all, but my vision is too big to execute by myself. How do I get people to help me without forming a company?
- vmateixeira 8y ago
  Tell people about it. Let it grow from being just your vision to become a small group's vision.
yitchelle 8y ago
Personally, it should not negatively impact lives. For example, I can't see myself saying "I will take this job for the money, and the gun I help engineered is used to kill humans during combat".
- sokoloff 8y ago
  I don't work in the field and don't know exactly how I'd personally feel about it, but I can see a very strong argument that even one of the most heinous weapons every deployed on Earth likely saved a net million-plus lives. If that is the case, is it moral to refuse to work on the Manhattan Project if asked? (I also agree that working on the next generation of the atomic bomb or the next revision of the M16/AK47 does not hold the same promise of saving lives, of course...)
  - yitchelle 8y ago
    You are totally right, I am oversimplifying it. Do you know of any text, interviews or discussions with any of the scientists on the Manhattan project on the morality of their work?
    - blihp 8y ago
      It looks like this might be a good source: https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories
  - wool_gather 8y ago
    Framed like that, it's basically the trolley problem[0]. For which I don't think there's a good answer. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
    - manigandham 8y ago
      There is. It's a solved problem. The only issue is lack of info (many evil people vs 1 good) but most people get stuck because of a "no compromises" attitude and lack of will to make that decision. Modern society has already made the choice though. We sacrifice a few for the many all the time, and they are called heros and duly celebrated.
kopo 8y ago
I think the quote goes recognition and praise trumps sex and money. Guys join the army for what? Loose their lives for what?
- abledon 8y ago
  They join the army to protect their nation and the privileges we have. So your family can have dinner at night without worrying about people from a neighboring land busting in and stealing your property , kidnapping murdeing raping family etc They are people who are signing up for a job whose work benefits are medium probability of making their spouses widows and single parents overnight
  - kopo 8y ago
    Ceremony and tradition, parades and costume, medals and ribbons exist for what reason?
  - sailfast 8y ago
    They also join because of solid signing bonuses, good training, GI Bill, and a good resume item. Let’s not kid ourselves about the economic make-up of our enlisted military. I am not saying that they did not sign up for the other reasons as well, and by saying this I don’t think I am undermining their commitment to serve or their intent, but in a volunteer force it is also about money, and we’re going to have to pay a lot more to meet recruitment targets.
abledon 8y ago
The point of business should be for the betterment of humanity, not money
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  That literally defies the very definition of the word business.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  That is what NGOs are for.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  Get your dirty socialism out of here./s
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
pjmlp 8y ago
It surprised me how many believed on the "don't be evil" motto, keeping customers and board members happy is all that counts.

For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the end they will do everything for money.

swiley 8y ago

I was under the impression that pre 20th century companies just existed as a legal and organizational convenience in order to help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit.

treerock 8y ago
I'm curious. I've read a few (mostly fictional) accounts of early companies, and the drive for profit seemed stronger (if anything) than it is now.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  Companies began as a means to have an endeavour progress while the people involved changed [0]. The nature of the endeavour could be profit, but by no means had to be. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#History
- adventured 8y ago
  I've read just about every non-fiction account I can get my hands on about business in the ~1850-1930 era. The drive for profit during the industrial revolution, was radically stronger than it is today. The giants of industry back then openly lusted after success, it was culturally acceptable to behave that way (right up to the point where you were dominant, then the people turned against you). They made no apologies for the all-out pursuit of profit back then. Rockefeller dressed it up slightly, by proclaiming that god wanted him to be rich, that to be wealthy was glorious. The so called robber barons lived in openly ostentatious ways that today's rich in the US would mostly never dream of; today most of them go out of their way to pretend they're not so rich and to hide it. Open shows of wealth today are considered closer to vulgarity, crude, disgusting, etc. Back then, it was far less widely believed that wealth was stolen from 'the people'; today, it's widely believed that the rich are all thieves in some considerable manner. There was no welfare state at all, income taxes were extremely low or non-existent, so the accumulation of wealth happened far faster. Companies often paid extremely high dividends 10 to 20 times higher than is normal today. Tactics, when it came to dealing with competition, were far beyond anything you see today. There were few regulations in the US, so companies were free to devise all manners of schemes to best their competitors. The treatment of labor in the pursuit of profit, was similarly far more brutal (there's really no comparison, Amazon's warehouse workers are treated like kings compared to sweatshop workers back then).
  - dieterrams 8y ago
    Do you have a short list of book recommendations?
quantummkv 8y ago
The East India Company (amongst many others) did heinous stuff solely to make a profit. If anything, the drive for profit is a little less now.
- noir_lord 8y ago
  I'm not sure the drive is less so much as PR is a thing, better regulation is a thing and the internet makes corporations misdeeds much more transparent. This is one of the reasons among many I regard the decline in proper journalism as so worrying.
roenxi 8y ago
If anyone knows what I'm trying to say and can put it in clearer words that'd be lovely, I think I'm missing an important linking idea here. Anyway... Imagine there are two paths from A to B (the left and right path). 100 people walk from A to B. Half take the left and half the right, and none of them have any information not in this paragraph. There are wolves on the left path. Everyone who travels it gets eaten. Now, at B, we have 50 people. They all chose the right path voluntarily, they all made a choice. None of them knew about the wolves though. How do we catagorise this situation in term of having and not having made a "real" choice? I argue that in practice, whatever the people were thinking when they chose B was irrelevant, because they didn't know the thing that actually mattered and they didn't have a proxy variable for it. With that setup, I'd argue companies that "help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit" are a lot like my right path, in that the people may not have been focused on maximising profits, but if they didn't achieve them they wouldn't have lasted long. By evolution, there will be a decided drift towards companies maximising profits even if all the individuals actually making the choices think they are doing something real (or I suppose, the converse where they think that their job is meaningless).
- jackpirate 8y ago
  This is something like "survivorship bias", but that term is usually applied to extreme outliers like CEOs rather that average case people like you're doing.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
That's not right. USA Antitrust law was invented around 1900 to fight excesses is service of profile. A corporation could be chartered for any reason. What is true is that in the early 19th century there was a legal pretense that corporations had to justify their charter to the government in order to be approved and renewed. One of the very first corporations in USA was Alexander Hamilton's bank, that ran a water utility as a front operation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhattan_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhattan_Company The old days weren't as honorable as the stories whitewash. But not-just-for-profit corporations have existed for a long time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification... is a modern trend.
aikah 8y ago
> I was under the impression that pre 20th century companies just existed as a legal and organizational convenience in order to help collect a number of people with similar goals rather than to solely make a profit. You might want to have a look at an history book then. Companies had slaves, got kids working in mines, got to use the government to shout their workers who rebelled because they had no rights whatsoever, or just straight up used private armies. It was all pre 20th century already. If all this was not solely to make a profit, I don't know what it was. Furthermore the great majority of big ventures were family driven. There were not formal associations between "people with similar goals" who weren't blood related.

artellectual 8y ago

That has been the answer for last era. I think that’s why tech workers are starting to ask what we’re building it for. Because we’re here at this point because building “for money” is no longer good enough. Because what’s the point of having money when we’re cancer ridden and polluting our planet, and despite living in a rich planet people are starving, and the very resources that feed us are being destroyed. What’s the point of a pile of money when there is nothing else left?

tiredwired 8y ago
Sounds like an opportunity for someone to build the tech to cure cancer and filter pollution.
- j7ake 8y ago
  Cure for cancer involves molecular biology and filtering pollution involves heterogeneous catalysis. Where does programming come into play in any direct way to these solutions? I understand that tech is involved indirectly, but so is the coffee that is served in laboratories to keep scientists working.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    Human Genome Project? Tunmmor detecting AI? Global weather simulations?
  - justinclift 8y ago
    > Where does programming come into play in any direct way to these solutions? * Literally every piece of lab equipment that uses any kind of controller/control board (most of them)... has needed programming of one sort of another. Hmmm, with the exception of older analog gear maybe (decades ago?). * Every single piece of data collection, storage, analysis, and control software is created through programming. * Even communication of results among team members, to management, to the public, often requires programming.
    - 8y ago

EliRivers 8y ago

The current obsession that companies exist solely for making money for shareholders is an historical aberration. If that's still the common view in a hundred years or so, it will carry more weight.

ekianjo 8y ago
> The current obsession that companies exist solely for making money for shareholders Making money for shareholders is an instrument to secure long term/regular investment. It's not the "end goal", and almost no company's mission is "to make money". Money is just the blood stream that enables everything else.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > It's not the "end goal", and almost no company's mission is "to make money". Sure seems that way, when every decision is optimized towards making money short-term. I think the more correct model of most companies would be money-focused entities that through path dependence ended up in the market sector they're in. That is, the actual thing they're doing is an artifact of history and is abstracted away for actual operations.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  Yet there is a common belief that companies are legally obliged to make enriching shareholders their only priority.

panic 8y ago

Say I have an idea for how I want the world to be. I don't care about money at all, but my vision is too big to execute by myself. How do I get people to help me without forming a company?

vmateixeira 8y ago
Tell people about it. Let it grow from being just your vision to become a small group's vision.

yitchelle 8y ago

Personally, it should not negatively impact lives. For example, I can't see myself saying "I will take this job for the money, and the gun I help engineered is used to kill humans during combat".

sokoloff 8y ago
I don't work in the field and don't know exactly how I'd personally feel about it, but I can see a very strong argument that even one of the most heinous weapons every deployed on Earth likely saved a net million-plus lives. If that is the case, is it moral to refuse to work on the Manhattan Project if asked? (I also agree that working on the next generation of the atomic bomb or the next revision of the M16/AK47 does not hold the same promise of saving lives, of course...)
- yitchelle 8y ago
  You are totally right, I am oversimplifying it. Do you know of any text, interviews or discussions with any of the scientists on the Manhattan project on the morality of their work?
  - blihp 8y ago
    It looks like this might be a good source: https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories
- wool_gather 8y ago
  Framed like that, it's basically the trolley problem[0]. For which I don't think there's a good answer. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
  - manigandham 8y ago
    There is. It's a solved problem. The only issue is lack of info (many evil people vs 1 good) but most people get stuck because of a "no compromises" attitude and lack of will to make that decision. Modern society has already made the choice though. We sacrifice a few for the many all the time, and they are called heros and duly celebrated.

kopo 8y ago

I think the quote goes recognition and praise trumps sex and money. Guys join the army for what? Loose their lives for what?

abledon 8y ago
They join the army to protect their nation and the privileges we have. So your family can have dinner at night without worrying about people from a neighboring land busting in and stealing your property , kidnapping murdeing raping family etc They are people who are signing up for a job whose work benefits are medium probability of making their spouses widows and single parents overnight
- kopo 8y ago
  Ceremony and tradition, parades and costume, medals and ribbons exist for what reason?
- sailfast 8y ago
  They also join because of solid signing bonuses, good training, GI Bill, and a good resume item. Let’s not kid ourselves about the economic make-up of our enlisted military. I am not saying that they did not sign up for the other reasons as well, and by saying this I don’t think I am undermining their commitment to serve or their intent, but in a volunteer force it is also about money, and we’re going to have to pay a lot more to meet recruitment targets.

abledon 8y ago

The point of business should be for the betterment of humanity, not money

throwaway8879 8y ago
That literally defies the very definition of the word business.
pjmlp 8y ago
That is what NGOs are for.
prolikewh0a 8y ago
Get your dirty socialism out of here./s
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

pjmlp 8y ago

It surprised me how many believed on the "don't be evil" motto, keeping customers and board members happy is all that counts.