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Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. Generating profits is about th

Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. The paradox is baked in, and some of us do our best to navigate it.

mattgreenrocks 1y ago
> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.
- StilesCrisis 1y ago
  Maybe by the textbook definition, sure. Not a single user finds advertising valuable, and yet it’s the focal point of profit maximization nowadays. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.
  - phyzix5761 1y ago
    How do consumers discover new products and services if not through advertising? A product on a shelf at a store is also a form of advertising proven by how much money is spent on packaging. Word of mouth is also one of the most effective forms of advertising.
    - esseph 1y ago
      > How do consumers discover new products By looking them up when they need them
      - lazide 1y ago
        Sometimes sure, but more often than not they ‘realize’ they need x thing because recently they were told they need x thing. It’s a big oroborous.
        esseph 1y ago
        TBF trying to sell me on anything with a commercial, print advertisement, video ad, cold call, or anything else is an exercise in frustration.
        lazide 1y ago
        Do you buy…. Paper towels? Most soaps? Specific brands of meat? Go on vacations to specific places? Chances are, you found out at least some of those due to advertisers. No man is an island.
        esseph 1y ago
        No, I'm pretty much a fucking island. The paper towels I'd probably change if they weren't on a grocery subscription. Soap I just rotate between a few I smelled at the store. Not to say I don't CONSUME, of course I do! I... probably don't in what seems like the ways a lot of people seem to?
    - ndriscoll 1y ago
      Consider "advertising" as shorthand for "paid promotion" i.e. "lying". Why would product or service discovery require the people making recommendations to take money from the producers they're recommending? How could that ever result in a world where customers receive anything but the worst possible recommendations? Word of mouth: fine Product on a shelf: fine unless you made a deal with the manufacturer/distributor to put it prominently rather than believing it deserves to be there Taking money to give an endorsement: Bad. That makes you a liar. It's the dishonesty at the heart of almost all advertising that makes it bad (well that and the often accompanying implicit push for people to frivolously consume).
  - literalAardvark 1y ago
    Many people find advertising valuable. It's tracking, micro targeting, retargeting, and trying to sell me a fridge that I literally just bought while I'm off reading about sailboats that's intrusive. Advertise shoes, cleats, sails, and charters in the Bahamas while I'm doing that, not singles near me and bicycles because I posted in a Facebook group.
    - tonyedgecombe 1y ago
      >Many people find advertising valuable. Presumably the advertisers do.
  - tpoacher 1y ago
    Only for modern definitions of advertising, mind you, which are all about dark patterns and invasive marketing, rather than putting a descrption of your product out there that can be searched by interested parties looking to buy a product like yours. There were times were advertising was useful and desirable, e.g. Small Ads pages. There was also a time when ads were a single unintrusive scrolling line, curated by the website owner so as to be relevant to their audience. Those were fine.
    - grafmax 1y ago
      And yet it’s the profit motive that has driven the shift to widespread usage of dark patterns and invasive marketing.
      - tpoacher 1y ago
        We're not disagreeing, but in the sense that the language we use is important, I would not say it's the profit motive, but uncontrolled greed, that has driven this shift. Reasonable profit is necessary. Something needs to put food on the table, both for your own family and that of your workers. What you don't need is a 3 million dollar jet on the table at the expense of both your workers and your customers.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
    Advertising and public relations has always been applied psychology. The contemporary interation was originally developed by Freuds nephew (Edward Bernays). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays I highly recommend The Century of the Self for a great documentary on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
  - sdsd 1y ago
    >Welcome to late-stage capitalism That phrase has always seemed a bit wishful to me, like when Christians describe our era as the end times or when crypto people say "it's still early days".
    - yoyohello13 1y ago
      Yeah I think there is probably plenty more pain to come. I mean, we don't even have corporate controlled governments yet. Although that seems to be coming real soon.
    - rhetocj23 1y ago
      I dont really get that phrase. I always view people who use it as intellectually lazy.
- banannaise 1y ago
  Rephrased: Any artistic direction done in the interest of creating or increasing profits is overwhelmingly likely to be tasteless. I don't think that's particularly controversial. Profitability doesn't imply tastelessness, but profit motive certainly does.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    I would argue that if you can't make a profit you have shown you are tasteless. If other people don't enjoy it enough to pay you, that says a lot about how out of step you are.
    - yifanl 1y ago
      Making profit with art and making art for profit are tangentially related topics at best.
    - i80and 1y ago
      This would make a number of great artists of history "tasteless".
      - bluGill 1y ago
        A would agree with that for a number of well known artists often called great.
        cwnyth 1y ago
        If I were to bet on whether the critical consensus or some random person on HN had no taste, I would certainly bet on the latter. This post reeks of "Am I wrong? No! It is the artists, critics, collectors, and community who are wrong!"
        bluGill 1y ago
        There is no objective measure here. What i call good and bad is right for me and doesn't apply to anyone else- wait - I though I was arguing for consensus here and everyone else was calling me wrong
- fssys 1y ago
  in order for anything to become truly profitable its uniqueness must be quantified and integrated into existing power structures, it must be expressly oriented towards fulfilling the needs/desires of the largest amount of people for the least amount of expenditure. Profitability IS intrinsically distasteful. Market forces, online ecosystems etc, quickly strip away any idiosyncratic features present in a viral trend, they aggressively select for sticking power, everything tends toward uniformity. This is closely linked with the process of reification.
- apwell23 1y ago
  yes bedrotting watching reels all day is a valuable product. So is heroine. So eating junk food. Great logic.
- kingkongjaffa 1y ago
  Taste in this context is more referring to design rather than art though.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  > Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. In the spherical cow in vacuum market maybe. In practice there is rent seeking, profiteering, corruption, nepotism, etc ...
  - tsunamifury 1y ago
    Late stage yes. But design has created the most valuable and profitable products and companies in the world. Apple Ferrari Google Porsche Smaller companies like Yeti or Braun Etc etc Once they use design to achieve dominance yes they do the rent seeking you are talking about.
    - rhetocj23 1y ago
      Monopoly profits are the allure of innovation. Its the same reason those life-saving medicines get developed (patents). Why is this a bad thing? Personally Id rather have an Apple monopoly than MSFT for instance. I really love using my Apple products. I never enjoyed using a single MSFT product.
      - red-iron-pine 1y ago
        u/rhetocj23 is a one day old account made of random characters that is actively advocating for an Apple monopoly and talking shit about MSFT in multiple posts. remember folks 20-40% of social media is bots -- this is just a low-hanging fruit
        rhetocj23 1y ago
        you sound like a cry baby.
- yoyohello13 1y ago
  A lot of open source developer don't get paid for their work, but their stuff is often used by everyone. There has to be a 'will to make it profitable'.
philipallstar 1y ago
> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. This needs some justification. Profits are what you get when you can do something for less than you charge for it, and be competitive. To not be good enough to make profit you need to be able to force money out of people e.g. with taxes.
rhetocj23 1y ago
Hang on, it depends on the intent. Should an entity strive to be profitable? of course. How else will it be self sustaining? The problem arises when entities maximize for profit with no non-financial values that underpin their decision making.
9rx 1y ago
> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do Why's that? Profit, of course, is just the measure of how much trade is undelivered. The old: I give you my corn to feed your chickens, and at some point in the future you will give me chickens in return once they are fed and grown. The amount of undelivered chickens are my profit. But eventually you will provide the chickens as promised, theoretically. Fair trade doesn't seem tasteless. And if I forever hold on to that profit and never expect you to give me the chickens in the future as you originally promised, then I literally gave you the corn for free. How could it be tasteless to help someone out by giving them something for free? Perhaps you are actually thinking of something like regulatory capture that is oft associated with profit? I can see how that becomes quite tasteless and certainly the tech industry in particular loves to exploit that. I am not sure that underpins our professional efforts, though. The tech industry would still exist even without all the insane laws that surround it.
boringg 1y ago
Pretty good comment. It's a spectrum right? So if you went all in on profits you are likely all in on tastelessness. If you profit a small amount your probably only shedding a bit of your taste. However I would wager the argument many people have is that they view their professional life as not utilizing their taste and that is reserved for decisions in their private lives (for those who still keep the two relatively distinct). For those who have truly merged professional and personal and gone all in profit -- original point probably stands. Thats pretty tasteless!
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
OK, Banksy.
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
Almost all the artifacts considered beautiful from the last 500 years came from the use of excess profit invested into beauty and legacy.
Aerroon 1y ago
>Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. This is a mixup that the author of the article makes as well: >Copying and pasting code without understanding it. >Sending resumes and emails that aren’t proofread and edited. >Asking others to review code without giving it a self review. >Noticing a quality issue and failing to document or fix it. These are not issues of taste.
serf 1y ago
>Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Speak for yourself, not everyone works for the paycheck.

mattgreenrocks 1y ago

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.

StilesCrisis 1y ago
Maybe by the textbook definition, sure. Not a single user finds advertising valuable, and yet it’s the focal point of profit maximization nowadays. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.
- phyzix5761 1y ago
  How do consumers discover new products and services if not through advertising? A product on a shelf at a store is also a form of advertising proven by how much money is spent on packaging. Word of mouth is also one of the most effective forms of advertising.
  - esseph 1y ago
    > How do consumers discover new products By looking them up when they need them
    - lazide 1y ago
      Sometimes sure, but more often than not they ‘realize’ they need x thing because recently they were told they need x thing. It’s a big oroborous.
      - esseph 1y ago
        TBF trying to sell me on anything with a commercial, print advertisement, video ad, cold call, or anything else is an exercise in frustration.
        lazide 1y ago
        Do you buy…. Paper towels? Most soaps? Specific brands of meat? Go on vacations to specific places? Chances are, you found out at least some of those due to advertisers. No man is an island.
        esseph 1y ago
        No, I'm pretty much a fucking island. The paper towels I'd probably change if they weren't on a grocery subscription. Soap I just rotate between a few I smelled at the store. Not to say I don't CONSUME, of course I do! I... probably don't in what seems like the ways a lot of people seem to?
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    Consider "advertising" as shorthand for "paid promotion" i.e. "lying". Why would product or service discovery require the people making recommendations to take money from the producers they're recommending? How could that ever result in a world where customers receive anything but the worst possible recommendations? Word of mouth: fine Product on a shelf: fine unless you made a deal with the manufacturer/distributor to put it prominently rather than believing it deserves to be there Taking money to give an endorsement: Bad. That makes you a liar. It's the dishonesty at the heart of almost all advertising that makes it bad (well that and the often accompanying implicit push for people to frivolously consume).
- literalAardvark 1y ago
  Many people find advertising valuable. It's tracking, micro targeting, retargeting, and trying to sell me a fridge that I literally just bought while I'm off reading about sailboats that's intrusive. Advertise shoes, cleats, sails, and charters in the Bahamas while I'm doing that, not singles near me and bicycles because I posted in a Facebook group.
  - tonyedgecombe 1y ago
    >Many people find advertising valuable. Presumably the advertisers do.
- tpoacher 1y ago
  Only for modern definitions of advertising, mind you, which are all about dark patterns and invasive marketing, rather than putting a descrption of your product out there that can be searched by interested parties looking to buy a product like yours. There were times were advertising was useful and desirable, e.g. Small Ads pages. There was also a time when ads were a single unintrusive scrolling line, curated by the website owner so as to be relevant to their audience. Those were fine.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    And yet it’s the profit motive that has driven the shift to widespread usage of dark patterns and invasive marketing.
    - tpoacher 1y ago
      We're not disagreeing, but in the sense that the language we use is important, I would not say it's the profit motive, but uncontrolled greed, that has driven this shift. Reasonable profit is necessary. Something needs to put food on the table, both for your own family and that of your workers. What you don't need is a 3 million dollar jet on the table at the expense of both your workers and your customers.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
  Advertising and public relations has always been applied psychology. The contemporary interation was originally developed by Freuds nephew (Edward Bernays). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays I highly recommend The Century of the Self for a great documentary on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
- sdsd 1y ago
  >Welcome to late-stage capitalism That phrase has always seemed a bit wishful to me, like when Christians describe our era as the end times or when crypto people say "it's still early days".
  - yoyohello13 1y ago
    Yeah I think there is probably plenty more pain to come. I mean, we don't even have corporate controlled governments yet. Although that seems to be coming real soon.
  - rhetocj23 1y ago
    I dont really get that phrase. I always view people who use it as intellectually lazy.
banannaise 1y ago
Rephrased: Any artistic direction done in the interest of creating or increasing profits is overwhelmingly likely to be tasteless. I don't think that's particularly controversial. Profitability doesn't imply tastelessness, but profit motive certainly does.
- bluGill 1y ago
  I would argue that if you can't make a profit you have shown you are tasteless. If other people don't enjoy it enough to pay you, that says a lot about how out of step you are.
  - yifanl 1y ago
    Making profit with art and making art for profit are tangentially related topics at best.
  - i80and 1y ago
    This would make a number of great artists of history "tasteless".
    - bluGill 1y ago
      A would agree with that for a number of well known artists often called great.
      - cwnyth 1y ago
        If I were to bet on whether the critical consensus or some random person on HN had no taste, I would certainly bet on the latter. This post reeks of "Am I wrong? No! It is the artists, critics, collectors, and community who are wrong!"
        bluGill 1y ago
        There is no objective measure here. What i call good and bad is right for me and doesn't apply to anyone else- wait - I though I was arguing for consensus here and everyone else was calling me wrong
fssys 1y ago
in order for anything to become truly profitable its uniqueness must be quantified and integrated into existing power structures, it must be expressly oriented towards fulfilling the needs/desires of the largest amount of people for the least amount of expenditure. Profitability IS intrinsically distasteful. Market forces, online ecosystems etc, quickly strip away any idiosyncratic features present in a viral trend, they aggressively select for sticking power, everything tends toward uniformity. This is closely linked with the process of reification.
apwell23 1y ago
yes bedrotting watching reels all day is a valuable product. So is heroine. So eating junk food. Great logic.
kingkongjaffa 1y ago
Taste in this context is more referring to design rather than art though.
rightbyte 1y ago
> Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. In the spherical cow in vacuum market maybe. In practice there is rent seeking, profiteering, corruption, nepotism, etc ...
- tsunamifury 1y ago
  Late stage yes. But design has created the most valuable and profitable products and companies in the world. Apple Ferrari Google Porsche Smaller companies like Yeti or Braun Etc etc Once they use design to achieve dominance yes they do the rent seeking you are talking about.
  - rhetocj23 1y ago
    Monopoly profits are the allure of innovation. Its the same reason those life-saving medicines get developed (patents). Why is this a bad thing? Personally Id rather have an Apple monopoly than MSFT for instance. I really love using my Apple products. I never enjoyed using a single MSFT product.
    - red-iron-pine 1y ago
      u/rhetocj23 is a one day old account made of random characters that is actively advocating for an Apple monopoly and talking shit about MSFT in multiple posts. remember folks 20-40% of social media is bots -- this is just a low-hanging fruit
      - rhetocj23 1y ago
        you sound like a cry baby.
yoyohello13 1y ago
A lot of open source developer don't get paid for their work, but their stuff is often used by everyone. There has to be a 'will to make it profitable'.

philipallstar 1y ago

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. This needs some justification. Profits are what you get when you can do something for less than you charge for it, and be competitive. To not be good enough to make profit you need to be able to force money out of people e.g. with taxes.

rhetocj23 1y ago

Hang on, it depends on the intent. Should an entity strive to be profitable? of course. How else will it be self sustaining? The problem arises when entities maximize for profit with no non-financial values that underpin their decision making.

9rx 1y ago

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do Why's that? Profit, of course, is just the measure of how much trade is undelivered. The old: I give you my corn to feed your chickens, and at some point in the future you will give me chickens in return once they are fed and grown. The amount of undelivered chickens are my profit. But eventually you will provide the chickens as promised, theoretically. Fair trade doesn't seem tasteless. And if I forever hold on to that profit and never expect you to give me the chickens in the future as you originally promised, then I literally gave you the corn for free. How could it be tasteless to help someone out by giving them something for free? Perhaps you are actually thinking of something like regulatory capture that is oft associated with profit? I can see how that becomes quite tasteless and certainly the tech industry in particular loves to exploit that. I am not sure that underpins our professional efforts, though. The tech industry would still exist even without all the insane laws that surround it.

boringg 1y ago

Pretty good comment. It's a spectrum right? So if you went all in on profits you are likely all in on tastelessness. If you profit a small amount your probably only shedding a bit of your taste. However I would wager the argument many people have is that they view their professional life as not utilizing their taste and that is reserved for decisions in their private lives (for those who still keep the two relatively distinct). For those who have truly merged professional and personal and gone all in profit -- original point probably stands. Thats pretty tasteless!

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

OK, Banksy.

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

Almost all the artifacts considered beautiful from the last 500 years came from the use of excess profit invested into beauty and legacy.

Aerroon 1y ago

>Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. This is a mixup that the author of the article makes as well: >Copying and pasting code without understanding it. >Sending resumes and emails that aren’t proofread and edited. >Asking others to review code without giving it a self review. >Noticing a quality issue and failing to document or fix it. These are not issues of taste.

serf 1y ago

>Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Speak for yourself, not everyone works for the paycheck.