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Wow. Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders. When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in
by eric4smith 5y ago
Wow.
Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders.
When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??
- _jal 5y ago> When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits Christ, this Superhero CEO bullshit has to stop. It is beyond absurd. Is the multi-hundred X income multiplier really insufficient, they need their egos stroked constantly, too? I have co-founded a startup, and otherwise have worked at them for almost the entirety of my adult life. I know how much work, risk, and pain is involved. But this apparent need for Glorification of the Supremely Worthy Job Creator nonsense is just cultish and gross.
- aerosmile 5y agoI wouldn't have chosen the term noble either, but remember there are some non-native English speakers here. Fundamentally, people don't start companies for social status reasons - if anything, social status is the reason not to quit your comfy executive job at a large tech company and instead have to work out of a co-working space. And since your own description of your professional career implies that your startup didn't make you a billionaire, I really don't understand why it was necessary to bring up the "multi-hundred X income multiplier" fallacy.
- andreilys 5y agoSociety would be better off glorifying entrepreneurs than instagram celebrities. Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
- Apocryphon 5y agoInstagram celebrities are just entrepreneurs of fame. Many have made entire fortunes by monetizing social media exposure.
- andreilys 5y agoSure and I’d rather society glorify those who decide to start things - mom & pop shops, new products, services, etc. than someone who takes photos of themselves to create an online persona that they go on to monetize.
- Apocryphon 5y agoThere's often a thin line. A lot of these influencers end up peddling products or services of their own- after achieving fame, it's best to diversify one's business. And the online persona do at the very least provide a service to the public: entertainment.
- triceratops 5y agoHey now, those Instagram celebrities are "influencers". They're entrepreneurs too. I don't think either is particularly worthy of "glorification". I'd reserve glory purely for people who help other people without much monetary reward.
- andreilys 5y agoSo someone like Henry Ford who helped popularize cars gets no glory, but someone who dedicates their life to running an orphanage for free does? Sure the latter is important, and we should talk about them too. But civilization progresses due to risk-takers like Ford who spot an opportunity and dogmatically pursue it.
- triceratops 5y ago> So someone like Henry Ford who helped popularize cars gets no glory, but someone who dedicates their life to running an orphanage for free does? Yeah that sounds about right to me. Ford got a ton of money, what's he need glory on top of that for?
- astrognomy 5y ago> noble Telling that you'd use that term. Not all founders work hard. Not all founders are revolutionary. They are not lords and do not deserve worship. Altruism deserves praise. Employment deserves payment.
- zdragnar 5y agoThere are multiple meanings to the word noble, and you have chosen one that makes little sense in the context of the rest of the comment. It is hard to read this as anything other than a bad faith argument.
- triceratops 5y agoWhen will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? The ideal business would employ zero people, have zero expenses, and make a 100% profit margin. From a purely business perspective, every job created is an inefficiency. No one sets out to create jobs when they start a business. They set out to make money and create products or services of value - in that order. Employing people is an unfortunate side-effect of that.
- krapp 5y ago>When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? When it stops getting politicians elected. No one wants to vote for the person who assures them they will do everything in their power to put them out of work and transfer their value directly to shareholders.
- WalterBright 5y agoThe beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well. The failure of collective markets stems from nobody has figured out how to get people to stop acting selfishly.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well The free market does not encourage pursuing action where the benefits accrue to people outside of the transaction, but it does encourage actions where the harms are so externalized. A hypothetical optimally regulated market systems with Pigovian taxes and subsidies to internalize externalities would in theory have the effect that pursuit of private gain would at least not be adverse to the common interest, but that’s very far from a “free market”.
- WalterBright 5y agoInternalizing the externalities via taxation is very much a free market approach.
- 8note 5y agoMakes you wonder why all of these fancy tech businesses show up in California, as opposed to Niger. If all you need is this hard work, surely the wealthy businesses would be distributed all around the world
- xallarap 5y agoWanna make a deepdive into cultural aspects of the stanford prison experiment? Nah, just watch tokyo gore police.