> Reducing friction is good! And yet drivers are concerned about black ice. Maybe friction is good in some cases and bad in others? It almost feels like blanke

> Reducing friction is good! And yet drivers are concerned about black ice. Maybe friction is good in some cases and bad in others? It almost feels like blanket statements are unhelpful and whether something is good or bad are relative statements, i.e. something is good or bad for something not just inherently and universally so. For example, labor protection laws are bad for companies that want to be able to rapidly build up a workforce without having to commit to keeping it around in case they need to cut costs, but they're good for employees who want to be able to start looking for new jobs when they're laid off rather than having to desperately find a new job after immediately losing their income. Likewise, having to pay fines for dumping your industrial waste in a nearby body of water is likewise bad for companies that otherwise have to pay a lot of money for someone to pick it up and deal with it for them but good for anyone dependent on that body of water not to be contaminated. Both of these are examples of regulation creating friction that gets in the way of a business optimizing for its profits. And in both cases whether you think the friction is good or bad likely depends on your personal beliefs and value system. > Cost cutting is good, too. Again, "good" is relative. It's good for increasing profit, yes, by definition. But another way to frame the "cost" of a business is to look at it as its output. A company with almost no costs (and no, not paying its owner a salary because he can get by on the share price or pays out "only" the profits to himself doesn't qualify) is effectively just collecting money for zero output. Surely you wouldn't argue that landlordism (excluding actual building management, maintenance, upkeep, janitorial work, etc, which are often lumped in with it by its defenders) is the best (in the sense of "desirable from a society's point of view" not "optimal for profit") business model because its income exists almost entirely on mere ownership and does not require any actual labor to generate income (i.e. 100% profit after taxes)? Ultimately unless a company just accumulates its profits and sits on them (whether that means leaving it in the bank or moving them into financial products), the balance sheet will always ultimately zero out. Any unused capital is ultimately unused potential to generate more revenue so if companies are naturally profit-seeking they must be naturally averse to leaving capital unused. This means that if we talk about "cutting costs", we're not talking about leaving that money unused, we're talking about using it for something else. Cost-cutting is not reduction, it's redistribution. The question then is where does the money that would otherwise have gone to the costs that were cut actually go. That answer thus determines whether "cost cutting is good", ultimately, and even then it's begging the question of "good for whom". If I run a company and cut back on employee benefits, that's "cutting costs" and it's clearly bad for my employees but whether that's good or bad also depends on what I then do with that money instead. If I simply treat that money as profit and pay it out in dividends to shareholders or to me as a bonus, that's good for them (or me) but does nothing for anyone else. If I reinvest it within the company instead, it may be good for others and could even outweigh the bad of cutting their benefits for the employees (e.g. even just financially if the money that went into providing those benefits can be used to put them all into positions where they don't need them or can organize them themselves while still ending up with a net gain). > Seeking profits is normal for companies. Otherwise, why start a company at all? Eating your face is normal for lions[0] too but for some reason you don't see as many people constantly defending lions eating people's faces. If the entire point of having companies is to seek profits at the expense of the benefit of other people that makes it sound like companies are a net negative to society. I'm sure you'd disagree with that position, so I'm not sure why you'd offer it. [0]: I guess bears are the better analogy because they're literally known to go for the soft parts - i.e. groin, face and stomach - without even bothering to kill their prey, but this is a reference to the "Lions Eating People's Faces Party"[1] so please apologize the zoological inaccuracies. [1]: "I didn't expect the lions to eat my face", says long-time supporter of the Lions Eating People's Faces Party after their election success.