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And business can produce a positive net externality. For example; education and healthcare. Not only do both parties get something they wanted more than what th

And business can produce a positive net externality. For example; education and healthcare. Not only do both parties get something they wanted more than what they had, society as a whole prospers. Sadly many generations have now been brought up on morally bankrupt ideas about business and markets. Today there's an almost exclusively degenerate focus on "making money" rather than "creating value". But this applies to almost any human endeavour. If you rarefy it into some extreme and pure form, it becomes absurd, corrupt and self-defeating.

mistrial9 2y ago
individual survival has a way to bringing that out in people.. real or imagined needs for survival, or a close second, competitive pack pecking order with losers really losing in serious ways
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  > real or imagined needs for survival You're right, and I think the gap between real and imagined needs has become a chasm. People today live in a fantasy world, imagined needs, imagined harms and enemies, imagined opportunities... It's not necessities but the self-created fantasies that dominate our thoughts. The ordinary, well fed, comfortable life is just not good enough any more. Simply having an ordinary, successful business that helps the world is not enough. So people pay the price; living in abject existential fear of completely unreal things - of losing their imaginary gains, like getting banned from Facebook or Twitter, or losing at some online game like the "stock market". They lie awake worrying about a number in a computer that represents their wealth - not their actual wealth as capability, as a mind and body. That is what makes us into selfish and insecure people who create negative externalities on the world we live in instead of making it better. Because it's impossible to get lasting satisfaction from these things. Too many "business people" I meet these days are utterly trapped in that unreality.

mistrial9 2y ago

individual survival has a way to bringing that out in people.. real or imagined needs for survival, or a close second, competitive pack pecking order with losers really losing in serious ways

nonrandomstring 2y ago
> real or imagined needs for survival You're right, and I think the gap between real and imagined needs has become a chasm. People today live in a fantasy world, imagined needs, imagined harms and enemies, imagined opportunities... It's not necessities but the self-created fantasies that dominate our thoughts. The ordinary, well fed, comfortable life is just not good enough any more. Simply having an ordinary, successful business that helps the world is not enough. So people pay the price; living in abject existential fear of completely unreal things - of losing their imaginary gains, like getting banned from Facebook or Twitter, or losing at some online game like the "stock market". They lie awake worrying about a number in a computer that represents their wealth - not their actual wealth as capability, as a mind and body. That is what makes us into selfish and insecure people who create negative externalities on the world we live in instead of making it better. Because it's impossible to get lasting satisfaction from these things. Too many "business people" I meet these days are utterly trapped in that unreality.