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Obviously yes. For example a nonprofit municipal communication network that people use for direct video calling with their loved ones, or that a public universi

Obviously yes. For example a nonprofit municipal communication network that people use for direct video calling with their loved ones, or that a public university uses to distribute free lecture courses. A great deal of computerized products/services are today intentionally made to require constant upkeep so that they can produce an ongoing revenue stream when when no real work is needed. That's obviously not economically ideal, and their revenue is in some sense a measure of drag. Consider for example music streaming. At 3 minutes per song and using 128 kbps Opus, you could have your favorite 100,000 tracks stored on your phone for about $15 worth of flash storage. From that perspective, Spotify revenue seems like an absurd thing to include as a measure of "progress", particularly if you mostly listen to music from 30+ years ago, which of course is not being made anymore.

czl 2y ago
You mentioned a public university as an example, but it's important to note that such institutions rely on funding from fees, taxes, and donations. Taxes are generated from profitable activities, donations often come from the surplus income of profitable entities, and fees are paid from income earned through profitable endeavors. Thus, wealth creation, measured by profit, is essential for spending. Non-profit organizations, on the other hand, depend on donations or service payments for their revenue. While they do not declare a "profit" at tax time, any surplus they generate is typically reinvested in their operations or distributed to employees or members. Therefore, while they don't show a profit for tax purposes, they do generate surplus funds (aka profits) or depend on for funds from other activities that do.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  The point is profit is not a measure of wealth creation. It's neither necessary nor sufficient to create wealth. My university recorded a bunch of lectures for remote students a decade ago when I was there. They could release them to the public (in fact, while I was there, anyone could go view them for free in person in the library) at essentially no cost, creating a large amount of wealth but no profit. But they haven't and likely won't. In 2020, the government artificially tanked interest rates, causing asset holders (e.g. homeowners) to profit greatly without creating any wealth. Anyway, the other poster's point was that profit generating activity is not the only activity or the most important activity. And in this very moment you and I are doing that with our discussion. There are other benefits to having a good communication network, and it makes sense to measure the coverage and capacity of the network, not the amount of money people make using it, which is just one small part of its use.
  - czl 2y ago
    > The point is profit is not a measure of wealth creation. It's neither necessary nor sufficient to create wealth. Profit is the difference between the cost of some activity vs the benefit of that activity. How else can you measure wealth creation? > My university recorded a bunch of lectures for remote students a decade ago when I was there. They could release them to the public (in fact, while I was there, anyone could go view them for free in person in the library) at essentially no cost, creating a large amount of wealth but no profit. But they haven't and likely won't. Have you considered that the university may fear getting sued? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26136320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26136320 > In 2020, the government artificially tanked interest rates, causing asset holders (e.g. homeowners) to profit greatly without creating any wealth. To explain why the above statement is nonsensical it would take a couple paragraphs but I expect most readers will not need that. It speaks for itself. > profit generating activity is not the only activity or the most important activity. To spend and benefit from wealth you have to create it and profit is a measure of wealth creation. How did you read my words and reach the conclusion that I think profit generating activity is “the only activity or the most important activity”? > And in this very moment you and I are doing that with our discussion. Yes, we are enjoying leisure time because of activities that generated surplus wealth (including knowledge) by millions / billions of individuals now and in history. Without surplus wealth our lives might be more like those of our relatives in the animal kingdom.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago
      If getting into the weeds, I don't think you can accurately measure wealth creation since any reasonable definition of "wealth" is going to be dependent on utility metrics that vary from person to person. Whether an action net creates or destroys wealth is not even going to be consistent. Profit, as in dollars in minus dollars out, is much easier to calculate, but only tangentially relates to wealth. Whether a regulation may prevent it doesn't change the fact that they could generate massive wealth with no one profiting or incurring a loss by distributing it. For the purposes of the thought experiment, assume it already had captions for the remote students for whom it was recorded. What do you think is nonsensical? That the government (or the Fed under the direction of the government) intentionally pushed down interest rates with a policy of QE? That lowering rates increased the price of existing assets, generating a profit for the owners? Or that this was just inflation, not wealth creation? In any case, when rates dropped, first thing I did was buy a house, which almost immediately went up by 30% (based on comps). So apparently the reasoning at least had some predictive power. I also made some large stock gains going 100% into the market, but was too timid to use margin to multiply that. The original comment that you quoted and responded to was criticizing the article for implying that profit generating activity is all that matters (and hence the metric to measure instead of e.g. network deployment), ignoring non-profit activity which is arguably more important.

czl 2y ago

You mentioned a public university as an example, but it's important to note that such institutions rely on funding from fees, taxes, and donations. Taxes are generated from profitable activities, donations often come from the surplus income of profitable entities, and fees are paid from income earned through profitable endeavors. Thus, wealth creation, measured by profit, is essential for spending. Non-profit organizations, on the other hand, depend on donations or service payments for their revenue. While they do not declare a "profit" at tax time, any surplus they generate is typically reinvested in their operations or distributed to employees or members. Therefore, while they don't show a profit for tax purposes, they do generate surplus funds (aka profits) or depend on for funds from other activities that do.

ndriscoll 2y ago
The point is profit is not a measure of wealth creation. It's neither necessary nor sufficient to create wealth. My university recorded a bunch of lectures for remote students a decade ago when I was there. They could release them to the public (in fact, while I was there, anyone could go view them for free in person in the library) at essentially no cost, creating a large amount of wealth but no profit. But they haven't and likely won't. In 2020, the government artificially tanked interest rates, causing asset holders (e.g. homeowners) to profit greatly without creating any wealth. Anyway, the other poster's point was that profit generating activity is not the only activity or the most important activity. And in this very moment you and I are doing that with our discussion. There are other benefits to having a good communication network, and it makes sense to measure the coverage and capacity of the network, not the amount of money people make using it, which is just one small part of its use.
- czl 2y ago
  > The point is profit is not a measure of wealth creation. It's neither necessary nor sufficient to create wealth. Profit is the difference between the cost of some activity vs the benefit of that activity. How else can you measure wealth creation? > My university recorded a bunch of lectures for remote students a decade ago when I was there. They could release them to the public (in fact, while I was there, anyone could go view them for free in person in the library) at essentially no cost, creating a large amount of wealth but no profit. But they haven't and likely won't. Have you considered that the university may fear getting sued? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26136320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26136320 > In 2020, the government artificially tanked interest rates, causing asset holders (e.g. homeowners) to profit greatly without creating any wealth. To explain why the above statement is nonsensical it would take a couple paragraphs but I expect most readers will not need that. It speaks for itself. > profit generating activity is not the only activity or the most important activity. To spend and benefit from wealth you have to create it and profit is a measure of wealth creation. How did you read my words and reach the conclusion that I think profit generating activity is “the only activity or the most important activity”? > And in this very moment you and I are doing that with our discussion. Yes, we are enjoying leisure time because of activities that generated surplus wealth (including knowledge) by millions / billions of individuals now and in history. Without surplus wealth our lives might be more like those of our relatives in the animal kingdom.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    If getting into the weeds, I don't think you can accurately measure wealth creation since any reasonable definition of "wealth" is going to be dependent on utility metrics that vary from person to person. Whether an action net creates or destroys wealth is not even going to be consistent. Profit, as in dollars in minus dollars out, is much easier to calculate, but only tangentially relates to wealth. Whether a regulation may prevent it doesn't change the fact that they could generate massive wealth with no one profiting or incurring a loss by distributing it. For the purposes of the thought experiment, assume it already had captions for the remote students for whom it was recorded. What do you think is nonsensical? That the government (or the Fed under the direction of the government) intentionally pushed down interest rates with a policy of QE? That lowering rates increased the price of existing assets, generating a profit for the owners? Or that this was just inflation, not wealth creation? In any case, when rates dropped, first thing I did was buy a house, which almost immediately went up by 30% (based on comps). So apparently the reasoning at least had some predictive power. I also made some large stock gains going 100% into the market, but was too timid to use margin to multiply that. The original comment that you quoted and responded to was criticizing the article for implying that profit generating activity is all that matters (and hence the metric to measure instead of e.g. network deployment), ignoring non-profit activity which is arguably more important.