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The profit motive is part of the problem. It routinely creates perverse incentives. It has gotten to the point that, rather than seeking to build a great produ

The profit motive is part of the problem. It routinely creates perverse incentives. It has gotten to the point that, rather than seeking to build a great product or provide a great service and make a good profit for doing so, far, far too many companies are seeking to make as much profit as conceivably possible, and making the product or providing the service is simply a necessary evil toward that end. That is part of what has led to the catastrophic financialization of so much of our economy. Money is not the end. Money is a tool. The end goal should always have been better products and services, a better society, and happier people.

nicoburns 4y ago
Yes. It seems that capitalism is suffering from a particularly unfortunate case of Goodhart's law [0]: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" Capitalism is founded upon the idea that the amount the market is willing to pay for something is a good measure of its true value. Which used to be a pretty good measure (and to an extent still is - for now). But deregulation has increased our dependence on this measure, which in turn has lead to an increase in it is being gamed. And over time an increasing share of financially successful businesses are those that exploit failures in the metric rather than those providing genuine value. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- danaris 4y ago
  > (and to an extent still is - for now) Upon reflection, I think that this is also a significant aspect of one major part of the problem today. In the general case, yes: retail products, for instance, are still subject to market forces such that the price you pay bears some reasonable resemblance to what society considers the value of the product. But what about ad-supported services? The people consuming the services are not, in fact, paying with money. They have no way of gauging how much the services cost, nor how much they personally are giving up in terms of personal data to indirectly pay that cost. The personal data sector of the economy is, I believe, a perfect example of a place where Goodhart's Law has run rampant, with the only measures available being "how many users" and "how much annual recurring revenue", and both of these being hopelessly complicated—the former to determine just what is a user, and the latter to determine how the value of the service to its users actually translates into profit. Not sure how coherent this is, but it seems very relevant.

nicoburns 4y ago

Yes. It seems that capitalism is suffering from a particularly unfortunate case of Goodhart's law [0]: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" Capitalism is founded upon the idea that the amount the market is willing to pay for something is a good measure of its true value. Which used to be a pretty good measure (and to an extent still is - for now). But deregulation has increased our dependence on this measure, which in turn has lead to an increase in it is being gamed. And over time an increasing share of financially successful businesses are those that exploit failures in the metric rather than those providing genuine value. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

danaris 4y ago
> (and to an extent still is - for now) Upon reflection, I think that this is also a significant aspect of one major part of the problem today. In the general case, yes: retail products, for instance, are still subject to market forces such that the price you pay bears some reasonable resemblance to what society considers the value of the product. But what about ad-supported services? The people consuming the services are not, in fact, paying with money. They have no way of gauging how much the services cost, nor how much they personally are giving up in terms of personal data to indirectly pay that cost. The personal data sector of the economy is, I believe, a perfect example of a place where Goodhart's Law has run rampant, with the only measures available being "how many users" and "how much annual recurring revenue", and both of these being hopelessly complicated—the former to determine just what is a user, and the latter to determine how the value of the service to its users actually translates into profit. Not sure how coherent this is, but it seems very relevant.