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Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive deserve to not survive, in order to make room for more efficient organizations. This is a

Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive deserve to not survive, in order to make room for more efficient organizations. This is a principle of the free market. Also as a principle, regulating said free markets for QoL improvements (e.g. min wage, HI, disability, comp, soc sec, etc.) affect all participants - both efficient and destined-to-die businesses alike. If you can't exist through playing by the rules that everyone has set, why are you still in business?

gruez 4y ago
> Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive deserve to not survive, in order to make room for more efficient organizations. This is a principle of the free market. This assumes that such "more efficient organizations" can even exist. If they are possible, why aren't they already around? Are those "Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive" that you speak of somehow preventing them from existing?
- bduerst 4y ago
  Markets are zero sum. Competition ensures that an inefficient business will lose out to efficient competitors. In most markets where efficiency is not achievable, then businesses are not entitled to exist. This is why things such as tax subsidies and other forms of funding are used to bootstrap new markets (e.g. green energy) that have a net social gain.
brightball 4y ago
Should they? Every business doesn’t have millions of dollars in cash to burn trying to find product market fit. Most start from nothing or personal savings, perhaps partially from the salary of a spouse. When you start a business there’s an expectation that you’re probably not taking a paycheck from it for a few years while you try to attract customers to provide steady cash flow. While doing this, you somehow have to find a way to hire people to help you grow. If it doesn’t work out, the business owner loses everything most likely and will probably be on the hook for the space they were leasing. Now if you survive and make it past all that, hopefully everything stabilizes and you’re able to run a successful business that can return more to you than you put in…but it’s hard. Very very hard. This “should that business even exist” stuff comes from not having any idea how hard it really is and how much is really on the line or the ups and downs along the way (which are even harder when you’re trying to make payroll). If it was easy, everybody would do it.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > When you start a business there’s an expectation that you’re probably not taking a paycheck from it for a few years while you try to attract customers to provide steady cash flow. I think this is only true for a newfangled SF business. Traditional business gets a bank loan, has a business plan, and pays salaries from the start (including to the owner).
  - brightball 4y ago
    What are those loans secured against?
    - Sevii 4y ago
      The owners assets.
    - d3ad1ysp0rk 4y ago
      Bingo. As someone who started a brick and mortar business that is tied to our home, the financial failure would have very real impacts on us, regardless of having an LLC.
  - bruce511 4y ago
    I would have said exactly the opposite. Newfangled SV businesses have all that investor cash to pay salaries, whereas bootstrapped need revenue, the sooner the better. Make no mistake, the only reason a company closes is because they run out of cash. Old-style businesses have been doing that forever. SV businesses do the same when that "next round" fails. Which leads me to conject that a VC business is just a bootstrapped business, where VCs are the customer...
- lostcolony 4y ago
  >> When you start a business there’s an expectation that you’re probably not taking a paycheck from it for a few years while you try to attract customers to provide steady cash flow. >> While doing this, you somehow have to find a way to hire people to help you grow. Where is that expectation coming from? It's fine if it's a side business you're looking to bootstrap or something, or if you have enough seed funding (which can be in the form of your own savings if you're okay risking that) to be revenue negative for a time, but if you have enough funding or revenue to consider hiring people, the first person you should be hiring is yourself. >> If it doesn’t work out, the business owner loses everything most likely and will probably be on the hook for the space they were leasing. This is why you create a -business-. A legal entity separate from yourself. An LLC at the minimum. So that your personal liability is (wait for it) limited. If you're doing a sole proprietorship or something, where you'd be on the hook for everything, WTF are you doing hiring people and signing leases?
FpUser 4y ago
>"Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive deserve to not survive, in order to make room for more efficient organizations. " Reads like maximalist statement with zero clues about the subject.
- apalmer 4y ago
  This is basic concept of the free market. it is valid to reject this concept. The free market is basically a religion in the US. However if you reject this ideal which is the western worlds baseline, then you really have to provide some info on what framework you are arguing from…
  - FpUser 4y ago
    Because "free market" does not exist. In "free market" you will end up with few majors owning everything else and controlling people's lives. We have various regulations that among the other protect small companies to a point and are trying to keep the huge ones in check. Things are slowly deteriorating lately in favor of big corps as they have government in their pockets but hopefully it is not yet irreversible. There is much more to discuss about "free market" and that naive "survival of the fittest" look at it but I am in no mood and am not qualified to write essays about the subject.
    - bduerst 4y ago
      Which is why if you read the second part about my comment above, free markets are regulated. It's a no true scotsman to appeal to the purity of free market semantics when nobody else is using language limited to the literal definition.

gruez 4y ago

> Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive deserve to not survive, in order to make room for more efficient organizations. This is a principle of the free market. This assumes that such "more efficient organizations" can even exist. If they are possible, why aren't they already around? Are those "Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive" that you speak of somehow preventing them from existing?

bduerst 4y ago
Markets are zero sum. Competition ensures that an inefficient business will lose out to efficient competitors. In most markets where efficiency is not achievable, then businesses are not entitled to exist. This is why things such as tax subsidies and other forms of funding are used to bootstrap new markets (e.g. green energy) that have a net social gain.

brightball 4y ago

Should they? Every business doesn’t have millions of dollars in cash to burn trying to find product market fit. Most start from nothing or personal savings, perhaps partially from the salary of a spouse. When you start a business there’s an expectation that you’re probably not taking a paycheck from it for a few years while you try to attract customers to provide steady cash flow. While doing this, you somehow have to find a way to hire people to help you grow. If it doesn’t work out, the business owner loses everything most likely and will probably be on the hook for the space they were leasing. Now if you survive and make it past all that, hopefully everything stabilizes and you’re able to run a successful business that can return more to you than you put in…but it’s hard. Very very hard. This “should that business even exist” stuff comes from not having any idea how hard it really is and how much is really on the line or the ups and downs along the way (which are even harder when you’re trying to make payroll). If it was easy, everybody would do it.

Aeolun 4y ago
> When you start a business there’s an expectation that you’re probably not taking a paycheck from it for a few years while you try to attract customers to provide steady cash flow. I think this is only true for a newfangled SF business. Traditional business gets a bank loan, has a business plan, and pays salaries from the start (including to the owner).
- brightball 4y ago
  What are those loans secured against?
  - Sevii 4y ago
    The owners assets.
  - d3ad1ysp0rk 4y ago
    Bingo. As someone who started a brick and mortar business that is tied to our home, the financial failure would have very real impacts on us, regardless of having an LLC.
- bruce511 4y ago
  I would have said exactly the opposite. Newfangled SV businesses have all that investor cash to pay salaries, whereas bootstrapped need revenue, the sooner the better. Make no mistake, the only reason a company closes is because they run out of cash. Old-style businesses have been doing that forever. SV businesses do the same when that "next round" fails. Which leads me to conject that a VC business is just a bootstrapped business, where VCs are the customer...
lostcolony 4y ago
>> When you start a business there’s an expectation that you’re probably not taking a paycheck from it for a few years while you try to attract customers to provide steady cash flow. >> While doing this, you somehow have to find a way to hire people to help you grow. Where is that expectation coming from? It's fine if it's a side business you're looking to bootstrap or something, or if you have enough seed funding (which can be in the form of your own savings if you're okay risking that) to be revenue negative for a time, but if you have enough funding or revenue to consider hiring people, the first person you should be hiring is yourself. >> If it doesn’t work out, the business owner loses everything most likely and will probably be on the hook for the space they were leasing. This is why you create a -business-. A legal entity separate from yourself. An LLC at the minimum. So that your personal liability is (wait for it) limited. If you're doing a sole proprietorship or something, where you'd be on the hook for everything, WTF are you doing hiring people and signing leases?

FpUser 4y ago

>"Businesses that cannot afford to retain talent and remain competitive deserve to not survive, in order to make room for more efficient organizations. " Reads like maximalist statement with zero clues about the subject.

apalmer 4y ago
This is basic concept of the free market. it is valid to reject this concept. The free market is basically a religion in the US. However if you reject this ideal which is the western worlds baseline, then you really have to provide some info on what framework you are arguing from…
- FpUser 4y ago
  Because "free market" does not exist. In "free market" you will end up with few majors owning everything else and controlling people's lives. We have various regulations that among the other protect small companies to a point and are trying to keep the huge ones in check. Things are slowly deteriorating lately in favor of big corps as they have government in their pockets but hopefully it is not yet irreversible. There is much more to discuss about "free market" and that naive "survival of the fittest" look at it but I am in no mood and am not qualified to write essays about the subject.
  - bduerst 4y ago
    Which is why if you read the second part about my comment above, free markets are regulated. It's a no true scotsman to appeal to the purity of free market semantics when nobody else is using language limited to the literal definition.