3 ms·

Businesses are run for profit, that is true, but it doesn't say "for profit excluding all other considerations".

• coldtea 14y ago
  No. It just happens.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • rbanffy 14y ago
    Not always. Maximizing profit is good. Sleeping well is good. Optimizing for both is better.
    • coldtea 14y ago
      Oh, you can easily do both. Two ways: 1) you have no conscience. Which also helps you to get into the higher ranks of the company (back stabbing, bullshiting, taking credit for others et al). That puts the right people in position to both maximise profit AND sleep well (because they just don't care). 2) You just do your tiny part, it's the whole company that does the bad. You merely "follow orders" or "do what you have to do". So you sleep well. Like those guards at concentration camps slept well and were perfectly normal people (see "The Banality of Evil". That's how, say, Coca Cola, a perfectly legit company, with people wearing $10,000 dollar suits and smiles, nice, agreeable people, employs thugs to kill workers in Latin American plants when they demand better pay. And they can keep a straight face doing so, because the actual bad doing is happening down the chain and abroad. They just demanded "efficiency" and "stop the problem" that's all. They never said how exactly. http://killercoke.org/ http://killercoke.org/
      • rbanffy 14y ago
        Sigh... Thanks. I was starting to feel optimistic about the world.
• mixedbit 14y ago
  This is true for private companies. Public companies are owned by shareholders and I don't think many of them buy shares because company does some cool stuff, for example supports open standards. Shareholders want profit only, excluding all other considerations. This does not include shareholders that are also employed by the company, they may choose to optimize for something else, not only financial profit.