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You can still be rich. Tech culture, or rather modern capitalism, tells us that businesses need to raise a bunch of money, capture a bunch of users, and then sq

You can still be rich. Tech culture, or rather modern capitalism, tells us that businesses need to raise a bunch of money, capture a bunch of users, and then squeeze them for all they'll take. It fails us in two very distinct ways. It encourages us to think that is the only viable option and it's unethical. Primarily because it requires the perception of customers (and often employees) as a means to an end (not humans). However, the possibility for ethical, sustainable business models is still very real. I tend to believe we're going to see another wave of those soon as people figure out that it's actually easier to make a living that way.

queuebert 2y ago
> the possibility for ethical, sustainable business models is still very real. Those exist everywhere in the trades. Every major city has dozens of small businesses doing plumbing, electrical, roofs, etc., with the goal of sustainable, loyal customers based on doing a good job at a fair price.
- sosodev 2y ago
  Well put. The difficult part for us software folk is learning to apply that model to software. Customers in the world of software generally don’t know what they want. I think the low hanging fruit here is to copy products from the unethical companies and beat them at caring for the customers. The real value is probably in new product models that can only exist given an ethical perspective. Perhaps reviving the mostly dead pay once use forever model of software would work well. That model requires abandoning DRM which the unethical companies will never do.
  - necovek 2y ago
    Customers for other trades similarly "don't know what they want", unless it's "fix this for me". The main difference in the software world is that you can potentially build things "once" (or rather, keep building it forever) for a huge global market, which means that it's hard to know when something is good enough. With roofing or coffee, you do good enough work (differs between companies, sure) and move on to the next customer. But you don't think about adding continuously running rainfall test for the roofs you do to ensure no regressions (leaks) appear.

queuebert 2y ago

> the possibility for ethical, sustainable business models is still very real. Those exist everywhere in the trades. Every major city has dozens of small businesses doing plumbing, electrical, roofs, etc., with the goal of sustainable, loyal customers based on doing a good job at a fair price.

sosodev 2y ago
Well put. The difficult part for us software folk is learning to apply that model to software. Customers in the world of software generally don’t know what they want. I think the low hanging fruit here is to copy products from the unethical companies and beat them at caring for the customers. The real value is probably in new product models that can only exist given an ethical perspective. Perhaps reviving the mostly dead pay once use forever model of software would work well. That model requires abandoning DRM which the unethical companies will never do.
- necovek 2y ago
  Customers for other trades similarly "don't know what they want", unless it's "fix this for me". The main difference in the software world is that you can potentially build things "once" (or rather, keep building it forever) for a huge global market, which means that it's hard to know when something is good enough. With roofing or coffee, you do good enough work (differs between companies, sure) and move on to the next customer. But you don't think about adding continuously running rainfall test for the roofs you do to ensure no regressions (leaks) appear.