4 ms·

Stop optimizing for consumers, start optimizing for producers. Maybe, you want to rethink that.

• stavros 2y ago
  Why? It sounds good to me.
  • vrotaru 2y ago
    Just an example. Should teachers be judged on how a pleasant life they live, or how good they teach?
    • Qwertious 2y ago
      That's not as relevant as you'd think - the "customers" of teachers are, arguably, taxpayers and not children. Alternatively it's parents, or perhaps politicians who set the budget. Focusing on children is the more pro-social preference, but children who attend schools famously don't have jobs in functioning societies. More importantly, the teaching system is basically un-incentivized by incentives - teachers in the US (focusing just on the US for a sec) are incredibly underpaid, and basically rely on masters-degree teachers putting in effort completely disproportionate to the pay. Everyone accepts this state of affairs specifically because we're all ignoring market incentives in favor of the good of society (i.e. the quality of childrens' education). So, let's suppose we judge teachers based on how well they appease politicians and parents who support their funding: they pass all students, regardless of how poorly they do on tests and how badly the children need to just repeat the year. This is a terrible outcome, and yet you're implicitly endorsing it.
    • Droobfest 2y ago
      Obviously by how well they teach, but if we give them a stake in their teaching performance, their teaching should improve even more…
      • seneca 2y ago
        They do have a stake in their performance. It's their salary. If their performance is poor, in a functioning system they lose that salary.
    • vundercind 2y ago
      I assure you that being allowed to teach well would greatly increase the pleasantness of life for a hell of a lot of teachers. Nobody gets into teaching for the money—and, for that matter, there’s not a clear connection between doing it well and any kind of rewards at all, as it stands.
      • chasd00 2y ago
        Teaching is a good example. When you teach in public schools which is basically where the "people own the means of production" since the school is paid for by the taxes collected by an elected government, you're absolutely right. No rewards for quality teaching basically at all. However, if you're really good at teaching you can teach at a private school and reap a lot more rewards. Better pay, better recognition, a better work environment this list goes on and on. /wife is a teacher and has taught in both public and private highschool
        • vundercind 2y ago
          Yeah. Depends—fancy upper-middle-class and higher private schools are like that. The majority aren’t that sort, and both pay and perform on a similar level to public schools, if not worse. But the good ones, the ones people really think of when they say “private school” (but not the actual majority of such schools) do pay better and often have really good perks (the PTA-equivalent Christmas and end-of-year gifts you get at some private schools—damn!) As a bonus, private schools are usually way more willing that public schools to tell annoying parents to get bent. Which is a pretty big perk on its own.
• kvgr 2y ago
  Good luck producing and not selling.
• Arainach 2y ago
  Stop optimizing for financial leeches sucking value out of the system and externalizing all the societal consequences, start optimizing for the vast majority of the population. ....sounds better when you elaborate on the categories you selected.
  • robertlagrant 2y ago
    The vast majority of the population are consumers. Each of us consumes far more services than we produce. Making life better for consumers is making life better for everyone.
    • tempfile 2y ago
      By definition, the average person consumes as much as they produce. Generally speaking, the poorer someone is, the more they produce relative to what they consume. Making life better for producers improves the lot of the poor; making life better for consumes improves it for the overconsumers (i.e. the rich).
    • brabel 2y ago
      You're ignoring the proportions. Your happiness is maybe 80% related to your job and salary (at least up to a point where you can be considered wealthy, after that there's decreasing returns), and each product you consume from each different company affects your wellbeing by a minuscule amount. Even adding them all up won't give more than, say, 15% as most of your expenses are not on products, but things like housing and transport. Given that, if you could make everyone's jobs more fullfilling and increase people's salaries at the cost of things costing a bit more, you would definitely increase overall wellbeing. People would afford a small amount less, but that would not impact them significantly, or maybe at all. The problem I see is that in global competition, you may be put out of business by countries that give much less shit about worker's wellbeing because people will still spend almost all their money on the cheapest available option (even more so if they can afford less!), and that IMHO explains why American companies have taken over so many markets overseas (and now, China seems to be doing it even more). When that happens, everyone in the country loses. So there needs to be a balance, which I think Europe is doing more or less well: people still have great working conditions but can afford less than in the USA, where people have very near the worst possible working conditions (nearly no vacation mandated by law, no parental leave, no healthcare except for the best jobs), but can buy more useless stuff.
• aziaziazi 2y ago
  Company profits is not always aligned with consumer interests, didn’t understand why you switched them.
  • Gormo 2y ago
    Not always, no, but as the general case, they are. At the end of the day, people need to be willing to pay a business in exchange for its goods and services, and if they don't feel like they are obtaining net positive value from the transaction, they won't be.
    • JohnFen 2y ago
      > if they don't feel like they are obtaining net positive value from the transaction, they won't be. Excepting for the cases where people have no other choice.
    • consteval 2y ago
      I think key word here is "feel". The reality is that modern products are absurdly complex, and consumers truly don't know what is (and isn't) worth their money. Which is why marketing, making people "feel" a certain way, is SO important. Maybe even more important than the product itself. I mean, do you know how any of your food is produced? If you wanted to verify that the ingredients are what they say they are, can you? If you're buying a car how confident are you the transmission is reliable? Do you actually understand how the transmission is designed OR... is it just brand name? It's brand name, right. Ultimately companies don't need to, and are better off not, producing high quality and safe goods. It makes much more sense to produce lower quality goods and reinvest the savings into advertising. The consumer won't know the difference, and they couldn't find out even if they wanted to.
      • ogmanreal 2y ago
        [flagged]
• jandrewrogers 2y ago
  Everyone is both a producer and consumer, these are not different groups of people. While production is a prerequisite for consumption, producers have interests as consumers.
• kerkeslager 2y ago
  Well, it sounds like a step up from most companies, which is don't optimize for consumers, don't optimize for producers, optimize for shareholders.