6 ms·

Wouldn't this put US registered corporations at a disadvantage by allowing foreign competitors to analyze their cost structures and finding their weaknesses?

8note 6y ago
That sounds like the right thing to do? You should only be profitable if you make constant improvements. The constant need for improvements is why we use capitalism at all. If you're going to stagnate and stay profitable by hiding your process, it might as well be run cheaper by the government
- robomartin 6y ago
  You've never run a (non-trivial) business, have you? Some of the things I read on HN are jaw-droppers. Then I remember that people these days confuse opinion and lack of context with facts and reality. My wife often repeats a saying that goes something like this: Your Google search isn't equivalent to my medical degree, residency and decades of experience afterwards.
  - grumple 6y ago
    On the other hand, sometimes your Google search can help a doctor in their analysis. An informed patient will get better treatment than an uninformed one; you must be your own healthcare advocate. And for anything nontrivial, this is why second opinions are a must. It would also be interesting if we lived in a world where case complexity and outcomes for doctors and various diagnoses/operations were published as well, so we can see how everyone really holds up competitively.
    - robomartin 6y ago
      > An informed patient will get better treatment than an uninformed one Absolutely true. Yet that does not turn them into a doctor. The statement I made is very specific. Personal note: My mother is going through pancreatic cancer at the moment. She is reading everything in sight. Good. Bad. Ugly. She is not intellectually equipped to understand and evaluate it. She is not a doctor. Well, she is driving her doctors insane. She is refusing certain treatments and asking for bullshit treatments. One doctor has already refused to work with her and asked her to switch to a different doctor. Her current doctor is pretty tired of burning valuable time with this google nonsense. So, yeah, in general terms, informed individuals --in any field-- are better than the uninformed. The twist, however, is in the meaning of the term "informed". The internet has created this paradox where millions of people believe they are "informed" or know something, when, in reality, they live in deeper ignorance of facts than before they became "informed" by google and social media. It's the difference between "Practice makes perfect" (which is a lie) and "Practicing correctly makes perfect".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    I've run a non-trivial business that depended on secrecy, and I recognize some of the ideas from the guy above. I wouldn't say "just let the government run this hedge fund", but there's some truth to what he's saying. I think it's also important that people can make comments on large social issues such as corporate transparency without feeling like they need to be experts. In fact, nobody can be an expert on these sweeping issues, because these laws affect such a wide variety of entities. I don't think the doctor comparison holds water. With a lot of work, someone can be recognized as a medical expert, but it's still a specific field that one can be qualified in.
    - robomartin 6y ago
      > I don't think the doctor comparison holds water. C'mon.
  - rpdillon 6y ago
    > Your Google search isn't equivalent to my medical degree, residency and decades of experience afterwards. Agreed, though I see the value of expertise partly in how it allows those with it to explain why they see things differently, rather than simply point out that they know more.
- ameister14 6y ago
  >You should only be profitable if you make constant improvements. What? You should be profitable if you provide a good or service that people want for a price they can pay. If you're not profitable, you'll go out of business. The idea that you must always be improving can be really, really negative. >If you're going to stagnate and stay profitable by hiding your process, it might as well be run cheaper by the government Sure, the government should take over running KFC because they won't publicize the herbs and spices. These are ridiculous statements.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    The are bold, but not ridiculous. Look at the restaurant market, for example. Everybody's constantly working to improve things. And you find the best restaurant scenes in places with the highest competition. In contrast, a lot of bad restaurants I've eaten at are in places with low competition where some owner is just coasting.
    - ameister14 6y ago
      >Look at the restaurant market, for example. Everybody's constantly working to improve things. Not really - I'm actually in the restaurant business, so it's funny you use that as an example. There are consistently profitable businesses that have made things the exact same way for many years. Keen's steakhouse, for example, has been famous for their mutton chop for 130 years, and the pipes in their collection are just as old. Competition amongst NYC steakhouses is very steep, but they don't need to constantly improve to stay profitable. They just need to maintain a high degree of excellence, which they do. Sure, to be on the cutting edge of the industry you need to change things, but not everyone wants to "improve" barbecue, for example. When a restaurant coasts, you're really not talking about them making the same great dishes over a long period - you're talking about them cutting corners. To me, the idea that you must constantly be changing to be profitable is ridiculous. The idea that the government should take over any business (and that it could run it cheaper!) that doesn't want to share its process is ridiculous. Neither is a particularly bold idea, they are simply bad ideas.
      - 6y ago
m463 6y ago
If you take the long view, would the transparency push foreign governments to change to keep up?
UncleMeat 6y ago
Sure. But is that sufficiently bad? Minimum wage laws, health and safety laws, and all sorts of other regulations put US corporations at a disadvantage on the world stage. The state shouldn't just exist to make our corporations as profitable as possible.
totalZero 6y ago
Two sides to that coin. It would attract investment because shareholders want to know what they're paying for. Also, what you're describing would foster competition because other companies would be better able to identify profit centers.
lordnacho 6y ago
Competition is good for consumers, that's why we want to encourage it. If your business model is undermined by people understanding it, you've got a problem anyway.
- natchy 6y ago
  > Competition is good for consumers On the whole, yes, but not for all consumers. If some people lived near a beautiful meadow and river, and everyone else lived in the desert, then competition (e.g. opening up a direct train to the meadow) would hurt the ones living in the meadow.
- ameister14 6y ago
  Competition is usually good for consumers. It's not a law, though. Sometimes competition results in worse outcomes.
  - solveit 6y ago
    Could you elaborate? This is interesting.
    - adolph 6y ago
      Race to the bottom. Think the old days of PCs bloated with ad-ware direct from the manufacturer.
      - wpietri 6y ago
        The same thing could just as well happen with a monopoly, though. Look at ISPs injecting ads and fiddling with DNS, for example. There's very little competition in the US ISP market, but plenty of players are still eagerly seeking bottoms.
    - ameister14 6y ago
      Sure - competition can result in higher prices and/or lower quality especially when it isn't properly regulated. One reason for this is that people make choices to beat their competition rather than to provide for their customers. Often short term thinking leads to quality losses in order to capture market share and sometimes the competition devolves into direct sabotage of competitors. This intense competition can result in higher costs for consumers as it becomes more difficult to bring products to market. Even without that, you can have price competition which, while theoretically leading to a low cost for consumer in the short term, can price out high quality goods in a price conscious market. Flooding the market with cheap, low quality goods can lead to overall quality drop and a decrease in investment in the area. Even though consumers prioritize cost over quality when given the option in some markets, it doesn't necessarily mean they are making the correct decision.
rsj_hn 6y ago
Make foreign corporations do the same thing if they want to sell to US consumers
catlifeonmars 6y ago
Yes, this does not sound like an equilibrium state. It’s not sufficient to have transparency. There needs to be an alignment of incentives between consumers and corporations. This can’t happen when not all competitors are subject to the same laws.
- catlifeonmars 6y ago
  Previous comment was a bit too dogmatic. It’s a matter of degrees for sure.
wpietri 6y ago
One of the great strengths of the US approach is our highly transparent capital markets. Plenty of non-US companies raise money here despite having to make a ton of information public. Why? Because just as much as companies want secrecy, investors want transparency.

8note 6y ago

That sounds like the right thing to do? You should only be profitable if you make constant improvements. The constant need for improvements is why we use capitalism at all. If you're going to stagnate and stay profitable by hiding your process, it might as well be run cheaper by the government

robomartin 6y ago
You've never run a (non-trivial) business, have you? Some of the things I read on HN are jaw-droppers. Then I remember that people these days confuse opinion and lack of context with facts and reality. My wife often repeats a saying that goes something like this: Your Google search isn't equivalent to my medical degree, residency and decades of experience afterwards.
- grumple 6y ago
  On the other hand, sometimes your Google search can help a doctor in their analysis. An informed patient will get better treatment than an uninformed one; you must be your own healthcare advocate. And for anything nontrivial, this is why second opinions are a must. It would also be interesting if we lived in a world where case complexity and outcomes for doctors and various diagnoses/operations were published as well, so we can see how everyone really holds up competitively.
  - robomartin 6y ago
    > An informed patient will get better treatment than an uninformed one Absolutely true. Yet that does not turn them into a doctor. The statement I made is very specific. Personal note: My mother is going through pancreatic cancer at the moment. She is reading everything in sight. Good. Bad. Ugly. She is not intellectually equipped to understand and evaluate it. She is not a doctor. Well, she is driving her doctors insane. She is refusing certain treatments and asking for bullshit treatments. One doctor has already refused to work with her and asked her to switch to a different doctor. Her current doctor is pretty tired of burning valuable time with this google nonsense. So, yeah, in general terms, informed individuals --in any field-- are better than the uninformed. The twist, however, is in the meaning of the term "informed". The internet has created this paradox where millions of people believe they are "informed" or know something, when, in reality, they live in deeper ignorance of facts than before they became "informed" by google and social media. It's the difference between "Practice makes perfect" (which is a lie) and "Practicing correctly makes perfect".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lordnacho 6y ago
  I've run a non-trivial business that depended on secrecy, and I recognize some of the ideas from the guy above. I wouldn't say "just let the government run this hedge fund", but there's some truth to what he's saying. I think it's also important that people can make comments on large social issues such as corporate transparency without feeling like they need to be experts. In fact, nobody can be an expert on these sweeping issues, because these laws affect such a wide variety of entities. I don't think the doctor comparison holds water. With a lot of work, someone can be recognized as a medical expert, but it's still a specific field that one can be qualified in.
  - robomartin 6y ago
    > I don't think the doctor comparison holds water. C'mon.
- rpdillon 6y ago
  > Your Google search isn't equivalent to my medical degree, residency and decades of experience afterwards. Agreed, though I see the value of expertise partly in how it allows those with it to explain why they see things differently, rather than simply point out that they know more.
ameister14 6y ago
>You should only be profitable if you make constant improvements. What? You should be profitable if you provide a good or service that people want for a price they can pay. If you're not profitable, you'll go out of business. The idea that you must always be improving can be really, really negative. >If you're going to stagnate and stay profitable by hiding your process, it might as well be run cheaper by the government Sure, the government should take over running KFC because they won't publicize the herbs and spices. These are ridiculous statements.
- wpietri 6y ago
  The are bold, but not ridiculous. Look at the restaurant market, for example. Everybody's constantly working to improve things. And you find the best restaurant scenes in places with the highest competition. In contrast, a lot of bad restaurants I've eaten at are in places with low competition where some owner is just coasting.
  - ameister14 6y ago
    >Look at the restaurant market, for example. Everybody's constantly working to improve things. Not really - I'm actually in the restaurant business, so it's funny you use that as an example. There are consistently profitable businesses that have made things the exact same way for many years. Keen's steakhouse, for example, has been famous for their mutton chop for 130 years, and the pipes in their collection are just as old. Competition amongst NYC steakhouses is very steep, but they don't need to constantly improve to stay profitable. They just need to maintain a high degree of excellence, which they do. Sure, to be on the cutting edge of the industry you need to change things, but not everyone wants to "improve" barbecue, for example. When a restaurant coasts, you're really not talking about them making the same great dishes over a long period - you're talking about them cutting corners. To me, the idea that you must constantly be changing to be profitable is ridiculous. The idea that the government should take over any business (and that it could run it cheaper!) that doesn't want to share its process is ridiculous. Neither is a particularly bold idea, they are simply bad ideas.
    - 6y ago

m463 6y ago

If you take the long view, would the transparency push foreign governments to change to keep up?

UncleMeat 6y ago

Sure. But is that sufficiently bad? Minimum wage laws, health and safety laws, and all sorts of other regulations put US corporations at a disadvantage on the world stage. The state shouldn't just exist to make our corporations as profitable as possible.

totalZero 6y ago

Two sides to that coin. It would attract investment because shareholders want to know what they're paying for. Also, what you're describing would foster competition because other companies would be better able to identify profit centers.

lordnacho 6y ago

Competition is good for consumers, that's why we want to encourage it. If your business model is undermined by people understanding it, you've got a problem anyway.

natchy 6y ago
> Competition is good for consumers On the whole, yes, but not for all consumers. If some people lived near a beautiful meadow and river, and everyone else lived in the desert, then competition (e.g. opening up a direct train to the meadow) would hurt the ones living in the meadow.
ameister14 6y ago
Competition is usually good for consumers. It's not a law, though. Sometimes competition results in worse outcomes.
- solveit 6y ago
  Could you elaborate? This is interesting.
  - adolph 6y ago
    Race to the bottom. Think the old days of PCs bloated with ad-ware direct from the manufacturer.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      The same thing could just as well happen with a monopoly, though. Look at ISPs injecting ads and fiddling with DNS, for example. There's very little competition in the US ISP market, but plenty of players are still eagerly seeking bottoms.
  - ameister14 6y ago
    Sure - competition can result in higher prices and/or lower quality especially when it isn't properly regulated. One reason for this is that people make choices to beat their competition rather than to provide for their customers. Often short term thinking leads to quality losses in order to capture market share and sometimes the competition devolves into direct sabotage of competitors. This intense competition can result in higher costs for consumers as it becomes more difficult to bring products to market. Even without that, you can have price competition which, while theoretically leading to a low cost for consumer in the short term, can price out high quality goods in a price conscious market. Flooding the market with cheap, low quality goods can lead to overall quality drop and a decrease in investment in the area. Even though consumers prioritize cost over quality when given the option in some markets, it doesn't necessarily mean they are making the correct decision.

rsj_hn 6y ago

Make foreign corporations do the same thing if they want to sell to US consumers

catlifeonmars 6y ago

Yes, this does not sound like an equilibrium state. It’s not sufficient to have transparency. There needs to be an alignment of incentives between consumers and corporations. This can’t happen when not all competitors are subject to the same laws.

catlifeonmars 6y ago
Previous comment was a bit too dogmatic. It’s a matter of degrees for sure.

wpietri 6y ago

One of the great strengths of the US approach is our highly transparent capital markets. Plenty of non-US companies raise money here despite having to make a ton of information public. Why? Because just as much as companies want secrecy, investors want transparency.