4 ms·

No, because this makes it seem like they are not making the right decisions because they are right, but only because doing the wrong thing made them unpopular.

by Athas 5y ago

No, because this makes it seem like they are not making the right decisions because they are right, but only because doing the wrong thing made them unpopular. It makes you wonder what other wrong things they do that doesn't elicit enough of a popular response to make them reconsider. It's not like the environmental impact of Bitcoin was a subtle or obscure issue when they first made the decision. They should have known better, and it remains worrying that they did not.

post_below 5y ago
For profit companies don't make decisions because they're right. Right and wrong have no meaning in capitalism. Companies make decisions based on profits. We might wish it were different, but it very clearly isn't. The best we can hope for is that public pressure convinces companies that right and profitable overlap.
- lbriner 5y ago
  That is an absolute statement being applied to a relative world. The idea that a company won't make a right decision ever is patently absurd. The idea that there are good companies and bad companies is likewise absurd. Of course, a large company has to worry about money because their burn rate is so high, to imply otherwise is naive. It doesn't follow that a cash rich company won't decide to sustainably source materials or pay a fair wage for their employees. Whether companies should ever be allowed to get that large is a different discussion.
  - post_below 5y ago
    Hold on, when did anyone introduce the idea that a company won't make a right decision ever? That's a pretty dramatic mischaracterization of my comment. It's so easy to find something 'patently absurd' in a comment if you aren't bound by the actual content of the comment. Maybe there was something confusing in my choice of words, given the downvotes. I don't think HN is naive enough to think that large publicly traded companies genuinely make decisions based on moral concepts like right and wrong. If they do the right thing, they do it because they see an advantage in it. That's how they're designed to function.
Negitivefrags 5y ago
Is it bad to not want to do something only because public opinion says not to? I think if you think it is bad, then that implies a certain world view about absolute good and evil. The implication is that this is an evil thing, and only an evil person would want to do it, and so if the only reason they won’t do it is because of public opinion then that doesn’t change their inherent evilness. But the other possibility is that the person making the decision believes it’s a good thing, or at worst a neutral thing, but are not willing to pay the cost once they find out how badly everyone reacted to it. Maybe Musk thinks decentralised money is more important than the setback to climate change? Maybe musk thinks that crypto will become green over time and it won’t matter? Or maybe he just wanted to do a pump and dump. There are all sorts of things musk can think, who knows. But either way, people got what they wanted.
- propertymagnate 5y ago
  In terms of the discussion about it being a neutral thing, some points: 1. Elon Musk is afraid of AI for the reasons of the paperclip apocalypse problem. You would make something and it would consume all of the resource due to it understanding its need to self replicate and not the fact that its use of resources meant a lack of resources for everyone else and potentially the destruction of the society consuming the paperclips. 2. Elon Musk makes the worlds most famous line of environmentally friendly cars. It is believed he does this, or at least he attempts to sell them on the basis of, being environmentally friendly and saving the planet. 3. Elon Musk also then invests hugely in a decentralised currency that, by design, if it becomes popular, will use all available resources at the exclusion of any other ideology, due to it's decentralised design - including saving the climate, etc - so because energy production by and large destroys the climate, it will destroy the climate. You can say this is a neutral choice, but mostly it just seems like a really dumb or contradictory choice. He (Elon) may well believe decentralised currencies are the future - he has also stated that as soon as a rampant unchecked production mechanism gets free, we are doomed. The apparent inability to connect the two is what I find so striking.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    It's not like figuring out that bitcoin destroys the environment is rocket science. Even if it was, doesn't he have rocket scientists to figure that kind of stuff out for him?

by Athas 5y ago

post_below 5y ago

For profit companies don't make decisions because they're right. Right and wrong have no meaning in capitalism. Companies make decisions based on profits. We might wish it were different, but it very clearly isn't. The best we can hope for is that public pressure convinces companies that right and profitable overlap.

lbriner 5y ago
That is an absolute statement being applied to a relative world. The idea that a company won't make a right decision ever is patently absurd. The idea that there are good companies and bad companies is likewise absurd. Of course, a large company has to worry about money because their burn rate is so high, to imply otherwise is naive. It doesn't follow that a cash rich company won't decide to sustainably source materials or pay a fair wage for their employees. Whether companies should ever be allowed to get that large is a different discussion.
- post_below 5y ago
  Hold on, when did anyone introduce the idea that a company won't make a right decision ever? That's a pretty dramatic mischaracterization of my comment. It's so easy to find something 'patently absurd' in a comment if you aren't bound by the actual content of the comment. Maybe there was something confusing in my choice of words, given the downvotes. I don't think HN is naive enough to think that large publicly traded companies genuinely make decisions based on moral concepts like right and wrong. If they do the right thing, they do it because they see an advantage in it. That's how they're designed to function.

Negitivefrags 5y ago

Is it bad to not want to do something only because public opinion says not to? I think if you think it is bad, then that implies a certain world view about absolute good and evil. The implication is that this is an evil thing, and only an evil person would want to do it, and so if the only reason they won’t do it is because of public opinion then that doesn’t change their inherent evilness. But the other possibility is that the person making the decision believes it’s a good thing, or at worst a neutral thing, but are not willing to pay the cost once they find out how badly everyone reacted to it. Maybe Musk thinks decentralised money is more important than the setback to climate change? Maybe musk thinks that crypto will become green over time and it won’t matter? Or maybe he just wanted to do a pump and dump. There are all sorts of things musk can think, who knows. But either way, people got what they wanted.

propertymagnate 5y ago
In terms of the discussion about it being a neutral thing, some points: 1. Elon Musk is afraid of AI for the reasons of the paperclip apocalypse problem. You would make something and it would consume all of the resource due to it understanding its need to self replicate and not the fact that its use of resources meant a lack of resources for everyone else and potentially the destruction of the society consuming the paperclips. 2. Elon Musk makes the worlds most famous line of environmentally friendly cars. It is believed he does this, or at least he attempts to sell them on the basis of, being environmentally friendly and saving the planet. 3. Elon Musk also then invests hugely in a decentralised currency that, by design, if it becomes popular, will use all available resources at the exclusion of any other ideology, due to it's decentralised design - including saving the climate, etc - so because energy production by and large destroys the climate, it will destroy the climate. You can say this is a neutral choice, but mostly it just seems like a really dumb or contradictory choice. He (Elon) may well believe decentralised currencies are the future - he has also stated that as soon as a rampant unchecked production mechanism gets free, we are doomed. The apparent inability to connect the two is what I find so striking.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  It's not like figuring out that bitcoin destroys the environment is rocket science. Even if it was, doesn't he have rocket scientists to figure that kind of stuff out for him?