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Why the distinction on for-profit? There are plenty of non-profits you shouldn’t trust. Surely their tax status is orthogonal to their trustability.

by dfee 7y ago

anoncake 7y ago
You can trust an organization to do some mix of pursuing its goals and filling someone's pockets. So while you can trust some non-profits, you can never trust a for-profit about anything you care about as a customer.
- Cyberdog 7y ago
  Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, you can't trust eating food someone grew for profit, riding in a car someone built for profit, wearing clothes someone made for profit… Under capitalism, encouraging repeat business from a customer is a successful long-term strategy, and maintaining customer satisfaction by not selling them food that will make them sick, cars that have faulty brakes, clothes that deteriorate in the rain, or so on is part of that. So if I purchase a product from a company that's been around for a while, I can have a reasonable expectation - a trust - that that product will be of some quality.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    > Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, you can't trust eating food someone grew for profit, riding in a car someone built for profit, wearing clothes someone made for profit… Indeed, that's why customer protection laws exist. > So if I purchase a product from a company that's been around for a while, I can have a reasonable expectation - a trust - that that product will be of some quality. That's pretty naive. Companies that used to produce quality products often switch to producing garbage once they have established a brand people trust. For-profit companies kinda work when they are being watched and it's easy to judge the quality of their products – i.e. when you don't need to trust them.
    - kbenson 7y ago
      It's really a matter of market efficiency, where efficiency is dictated by how much information is available. In a market where information is accurate and timely, companies cannot abuse customer trust because doing so for anything the customer cares about will result in them valuing that company and its products less. Different industries have different levels of information available, making it easier or harder to depend on what they say or show. Apple is specifically hard to reason about because some aspect of their value is based on their products being a status symbol, and some value is based on their functionality (this is true to a degree for most products, but is skewed quite high in the status symbol ratio for a tech product for Apple). On the one hand, Apple has been fairly straightforward in their communication and not lied often, and also has a business model that has less conflicting interests when it comes to consumer privacy, but at the same time they could conceivably get away with more because of their position as a status symbol. What this means for me is that I take Apple's claims about consumer protection fairly seriously in most cases, but for anything important I would not rely on them. They've banked a lot of good will, and at some point they might see it as worthwhile to make a withdrawal on it (if they hopefully haven't already), and I would rather not be in a poor position if/when that happens.

Why the distinction on for-profit? There are plenty of non-profits you shouldn’t trust. Surely their tax status is orthogonal to their trustability.

by dfee 7y ago

Why the distinction on for-profit? There are plenty of non-profits you shouldn’t trust. Surely their tax status is orthogonal to their trustability.

anoncake 7y ago

You can trust an organization to do some mix of pursuing its goals and filling someone's pockets. So while you can trust some non-profits, you can never trust a for-profit about anything you care about as a customer.

Cyberdog 7y ago
Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, you can't trust eating food someone grew for profit, riding in a car someone built for profit, wearing clothes someone made for profit… Under capitalism, encouraging repeat business from a customer is a successful long-term strategy, and maintaining customer satisfaction by not selling them food that will make them sick, cars that have faulty brakes, clothes that deteriorate in the rain, or so on is part of that. So if I purchase a product from a company that's been around for a while, I can have a reasonable expectation - a trust - that that product will be of some quality.
- anoncake 7y ago
  > Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, you can't trust eating food someone grew for profit, riding in a car someone built for profit, wearing clothes someone made for profit… Indeed, that's why customer protection laws exist. > So if I purchase a product from a company that's been around for a while, I can have a reasonable expectation - a trust - that that product will be of some quality. That's pretty naive. Companies that used to produce quality products often switch to producing garbage once they have established a brand people trust. For-profit companies kinda work when they are being watched and it's easy to judge the quality of their products – i.e. when you don't need to trust them.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    It's really a matter of market efficiency, where efficiency is dictated by how much information is available. In a market where information is accurate and timely, companies cannot abuse customer trust because doing so for anything the customer cares about will result in them valuing that company and its products less. Different industries have different levels of information available, making it easier or harder to depend on what they say or show. Apple is specifically hard to reason about because some aspect of their value is based on their products being a status symbol, and some value is based on their functionality (this is true to a degree for most products, but is skewed quite high in the status symbol ratio for a tech product for Apple). On the one hand, Apple has been fairly straightforward in their communication and not lied often, and also has a business model that has less conflicting interests when it comes to consumer privacy, but at the same time they could conceivably get away with more because of their position as a status symbol. What this means for me is that I take Apple's claims about consumer protection fairly seriously in most cases, but for anything important I would not rely on them. They've banked a lot of good will, and at some point they might see it as worthwhile to make a withdrawal on it (if they hopefully haven't already), and I would rather not be in a poor position if/when that happens.