16 ms·

Creating jobs is a strange goal. The effective, simplest and most probable solution is working inefficiently. Working efficiently, on the other hand, typically

by nawitus 12y ago

Creating jobs is a strange goal. The effective, simplest and most probable solution is working inefficiently. Working efficiently, on the other hand, typically eliminates jobs. All politicians talk about creating jobs. 99% of the time it leads to bad regulation that creates jobs through incentivizing inefficiency. People of course will vote for politicians that advocate job creation because people want jobs. The extreme form of this is ludditism. People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value. If a company could be made automatic and all it's employees jobless, then that would obviously be positive. The company would still create the same value to society, but would require less people. The main counter-argument is that those who advocate job creation only advocate "necessary jobs or "meaningful jobs". In practise that doesn't pan out. It's simply a backwards way of trying to create more products and services.

bdcs 12y ago
It is a very strange goal, indeed. I'm reminded of David Graeber's idea of "Bullshit jobs:" When I talk about bullshit jobs, I mean, the kind of jobs that even those who work them feel do not really need to exist. A lot of them are made-up middle management, you know, I’m the “East Coast strategic vision coordinator” for some big firm, which basically means you spend all your time at meetings or forming teams that then send reports to one another. Or someone who works in an industry that they feel doesn’t need to exist, like most of the corporate lawyers I know, or telemarketers, or lobbyists…. Just think of when you walk into a hospital, how half the employees never seem to do anything for sick people, but are just filling out insurance forms and sending information to each other. Some of that work obviously does need to be done, but for the most part, everyone working there knows what really needs to get done and that the remaining 90 percent of what they do is bullshit. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1s_sick_and_twisted_new_scheme/ http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
rayiner 12y ago
Its not a strange goal at all. We have a social structure and economic structure centered on work. Its the key basis for how the production of our society is distributed. Increasing overall production doesn't necessarily do anything for the lot of the median person. In a democracy, where the interests of the majority are paramount, a policy that reduces overall production but leaves the median person better off could be rational.
- cpher 12y ago
  Not sure how you define "improving the welfare", but it's certainly not the function of the USA govt to provide anything but what's defined in the constitution. You may disagree on a philosophical basis, but that's what the constitution is designed to do.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    The Preamble to the Constitution says: > We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitutional scheme to think that the Framers implemented "limited government." The federal government was indeed constituted as one of limited powers, but it was created against the backdrop of the state governments, which were conceived to have inherited all the powers of the British sovereign, limited only by their own constitutions. You can invoke the Constitution to argue that some particular policy is better implemented at the state level than the federal level, but it is incorrect to say that this or that end is not the function of the federal and state governments taken together. We live, by design, in a democracy: the ends of government are whatever we want them to be, subject only to the limitations outlined in the Constitution.
    - cpher 12y ago
      Unless I'm an idiot but you just contradicted yourself or misunderstand-ed what you wrote. The Federal government is indeed intentionally limited in power. Why would you want it any other way? I'm more of a Federalist--confusing name for an important concept. But I don't think that's what we're talking about. It sounds like we're disagreeing with what constitutes "general welfare" as you highlighted. Ok, where do you draw the line in modern society? If you want to invoke the argument "what would the framers have wanted?" then what do you think they meant? Who can limit the definition of "general welfare" now. All you need is a bunch of loud people for any random issue, then it becomes a general welfare issue.
brc 12y ago
So great it see someone on HN who gets it. It's always about productivity, all the time. Increase productivity bad you increase wealth and quality of life. Focussing on job creation is the wrong metric because you can do it by employing people to be inefficient, which makes everyone worse off as production falls.
dllthomas 12y ago
The best way to actually, legitimately create jobs is to find a way to match a need many people have with people who can address it, in a way that wasn't previously discoverable.
malandrew 12y ago
One goal might be to shift efficiency towards those who are most efficient. For example, does it make sense for very skilled professional to go to an establishment to get a massage or a manicure/pedicure? I could easily see those two jobs become 100% itinerant. It means that a productive customer doesn't need to travel and that all those people effectively become their own boss and maintain their own equipment. This also cuts out the cost of real estate, and allows for a reputation system where the best masseuses and manicurists do exceptionally well. Then again, this would be a net gain of 0 jobs, since these people would presumably be leaving employment under the person who owns the real estate. I can already imagine how the cosmetology boards would feel towards such a start up. Those owning the establishments would start pressuring the cosmetology boards just like dispatchers are the ones pressuring taxicab commissions. Do cosmetology boards regulate the establishments, the people or the people relative to the establishment with which they are associated? Another market would be disintermediating personal trainers from the gyms they are associated with. I'm curious if personal trainers would earn more if they paid for personal memberships with the 2-4 biggest gym networks in a geographic region and then advertised which gyms they could train you at. This way customers could search for personal trainers that work out of the customer's gym of choice. Right now PT pay a portion of their earnings to the gyms, and I suspect its a large percentage, relatively speaking. This could be extended beyond personal training to sports specific training (running, swimming, cycling, rock climbing, etc.). [sarcasm]Is the domain trainr.com taken yet?[/sarcasm] Another market could probably revolve around elections, and other regular seasonal/temporary work. Have the volunteers focus on the more valuable labor like p2p evangelism and have the paid labor work on putting up signs (and cleaning them up afterwards). Also, is there a market for in-home caregivers (elderly, disabled, terminally ill) already and special needs caregivers? Would be great to be able to search for people in an area by reputation, experience, special skills/certifications (registered nurse, experience with children with autism, etc.). Basically, any job that exists today where there are local establishments "pimping" out the employee (gyms, homecare companies, etc.) and taking an exorbitant cut of revenue because they have a brand name or prime real estate is ripe for disruption from an online P2P marketplace. You can literally flip through the "gigs" and "services" section of craigslist to get ideas here. I'm also surprised that there isn't a way to hire a cheap paralegal directly to help you find a decent lawyer, negotiate a decent rate and work with that lawyer to make things more efficient. The cost of legal representation could be much cheaper if people needing legal representation could hire paralegals and recently graduated law students that don't yet have a job (tough market) to help you out. Furthermore, it helps out all those out of work law students since it gives them a way in the door with good law firms via their client's pocket books. If a lawyer is particularly impressed with the person helping their client, they may decide to hire them full time. To truly create 1M new jobs, you'd need to make an entirely new line of work (Amazon mechanical turk type stuff), or enable 1M new people to participate in an existing line of work where previously there were barriers to entry (Uber/Lyft/Sidecar/AirBnB). The latter would have the effect of deflating that market, reducing median income so that achieving 1M becomes more difficult.
Spooky23 12y ago
That's the basic, economics 101 goal of a simplistic capitalist. Until a few years ago, the only people really pushing this notion were people in the resource extraction business. Efficiency at all costs is something that's great for you to make other people do. Do you take the bus and walk to work? Do you have an padded chair in your office? Henry Ford was uniquely smart among the "captains of industry" of the past in that he got that his ability to manufacture cars exceeded the economy's ability to consume them. One of his business objectives was for his workers to be able to purchase his cars.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Yeah, let's imitate Ford, and pay our workers well - as long as they allow their lives to be scrutinized by the company's moral police: The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and (what today are called) deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing." Besides, paying people well and eliminating jobs is not exclusive. Did Ford hire people he didn't need?
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    You missed he point completely. Ford was a hard nosed capitalist with fascist leanings. Even so, while living in an era where workers were competely disposable and had virtually no rights, he paid people more than they were theoretically worth.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      I just dislike the Ford adoration, but fair enough. Still, my last statement stands; paying well is not incompatible with hiring few.
andrewtbham 12y ago
I also fundamentally disagree with this post. My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs. I am reading a book about the Shipping container, and it massively reduced the number of jobs for longshoremen and merchant marines. I can also say that working at a big company that is people's mentality. They want to manage a lot of people. That's their goal. Not to create value. And imho the results are often poor. I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. imho the goal should be to find a way for people to meet their basic needs without needing a job. NOT to create tons of jobs.
- yannis 12y ago
  The RFS never said one million low end jobs and specifically stated they are not looking for companies that would employ one million people. Maybe creating 1,000,000 enterpreneurs?
  - andrewtbham 12y ago
    It sounds like they are interested in 2 sided markets, like Uber, or airbnb. I get that part, but the "jobs" part is lost on me. Wouldn't uber be cooler if it used self driving cars!!!
    - paletoy 12y ago
      YC isn't in a position to invest in deep automation, and are good at building markets. And once you build a 2 sided freelancer market , you are very likely to control it when it's automated.
    - prawn 12y ago
      Uber will obviously switch to self-driving cars once that's viable, shaving the on-going cost of drivers.
- eugenejen 12y ago
  I think you are confused with his proposal. YC is looking for any company that can create demand that requires 1 millions workers to fulfill it. It is not to create a huge company. It has nothing to do with eliminating jobs. It has nothing to do with provide basic living standard. For example, if a new technology that allow us to regrow part of organs easily, but it requires living persons to carry the organs within their bodies until organs mature to be transplanted. Those people may have a job as 'organ incubator'.
eugenejen 12y ago
Well, I think you don't really know what a job is and what efficiency should be. A job is demand that has to be fulfilled by another human being. Demand comes from desires of human beings. We as human beings, can have unlimited desires. We as human beings, are limited by time of lives. To create jobs is to create unlimited demand that need to be fulfilled with trading of time of another human beings. Efficiency is to increase the purchase power of time. Then wealth of lives of human beings. And wealth has to flow, otherwise prosperity won't appear. And desires are limited by our imagination.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- gone35 12y ago
  Beautifully, concisely put! It is a shame though your downvoters elsewhere in this thread fail to appreciate your effort at explaining the --admittedly quite unintuitive-- demand side of the macroeconomy.
  - eugenejen 12y ago
    Thanks for your appreciations. It is hard for me to explain those ideas as other do. But yes, I feel the current problems is we forget the demand side of economy.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
superuser2 12y ago
>The company would still create the same value to society Ok, I'll bite. It would still create the same value to its investors. No for-profit company ever creates value to society except by employing people or by having secondary effects that result in more/higher-quality employment.
- orangecat 12y ago
  Nope. See "consumer surplus".
  - superuser2 12y ago
    ... And why is that valuable to society? Because then consumers have money to left over to spend on other things. See "secondary effects that result in more/higher-quality employment."
pron 12y ago
> Creating jobs is a strange goal. Why? Who says efficiency should be humanity's goal? Is humanity a machine to be optimized? Are we just evolved cogs, one of nature's crueler jokes, or are we (also) agents that can put up a fight? You know, Dostoyevsky extolled the virtues of intentional self harm -- or spite -- as a person's noblest goal, asserting freedom from "laws of nature". I'm not saying spite should be a matter of public policy, but it's very important to avoid seeing some mechanistic, or even natural, process as a desirable outcome just because that's how things work (this is the naturalistic fallacy[1]). Public policy should be crafted subject to consideration and political debate. > People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value. Says who? That's a peculiarly American view of the role of corporations. Another valid goal for companies is providing sustenance to their employees first, and "value" later. I.e. generating value is just a means to an end. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- pfortuny 12y ago
  It also depends on the meaning of "value." In the US it looks like "value" is interchangeable with "cash-able goods," which as you point out is quite restrictive. And, on the other hand, it goes straight against most of companies' "visions" (which are usually non-monetizable).
- jsweojtj 12y ago
  >> Creating jobs is a strange goal. > Why? Who says efficiency should be humanity's goal? Is humanity a machine to be optimized? I think saying that creating jobs is a goal is more accurately the viewpoint that humans are cogs. Say there's an efficient way to do something, for example: a machine that weaves fabric. If the goal is to create jobs, we could stop the machine and hire people to do the job. In fact, I bet we could force people to do it in a really inefficient and tedious manner that would require lots of people to replace a single machine. The disadvantages: slower. more expensive. more error-prone. people's time-wasting. The advantages: these people have a job so now you have a 'valid' excuse to give people an income.
  - 12y ago
lsc 12y ago
>People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value. "creating shareholder value" Even if we're ignoring "social good" (which is a perfectly valid "shareholder value") one way to chase profit is to look for inputs that are cheap, and figure out how to turn those inexpensive inputs into expensive finished goods. Right now, low-end labor is quite inexpensive. If you can figure out how to produce something useful using that inexpensive labor, there is profit to be had.

by nawitus 12y ago

bdcs 12y ago

It is a very strange goal, indeed. I'm reminded of David Graeber's idea of "Bullshit jobs:" When I talk about bullshit jobs, I mean, the kind of jobs that even those who work them feel do not really need to exist. A lot of them are made-up middle management, you know, I’m the “East Coast strategic vision coordinator” for some big firm, which basically means you spend all your time at meetings or forming teams that then send reports to one another. Or someone who works in an industry that they feel doesn’t need to exist, like most of the corporate lawyers I know, or telemarketers, or lobbyists…. Just think of when you walk into a hospital, how half the employees never seem to do anything for sick people, but are just filling out insurance forms and sending information to each other. Some of that work obviously does need to be done, but for the most part, everyone working there knows what really needs to get done and that the remaining 90 percent of what they do is bullshit. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1s_sick_and_twisted_new_scheme/ http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

rayiner 12y ago

Its not a strange goal at all. We have a social structure and economic structure centered on work. Its the key basis for how the production of our society is distributed. Increasing overall production doesn't necessarily do anything for the lot of the median person. In a democracy, where the interests of the majority are paramount, a policy that reduces overall production but leaves the median person better off could be rational.

cpher 12y ago
Not sure how you define "improving the welfare", but it's certainly not the function of the USA govt to provide anything but what's defined in the constitution. You may disagree on a philosophical basis, but that's what the constitution is designed to do.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The Preamble to the Constitution says: > We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitutional scheme to think that the Framers implemented "limited government." The federal government was indeed constituted as one of limited powers, but it was created against the backdrop of the state governments, which were conceived to have inherited all the powers of the British sovereign, limited only by their own constitutions. You can invoke the Constitution to argue that some particular policy is better implemented at the state level than the federal level, but it is incorrect to say that this or that end is not the function of the federal and state governments taken together. We live, by design, in a democracy: the ends of government are whatever we want them to be, subject only to the limitations outlined in the Constitution.
  - cpher 12y ago
    Unless I'm an idiot but you just contradicted yourself or misunderstand-ed what you wrote. The Federal government is indeed intentionally limited in power. Why would you want it any other way? I'm more of a Federalist--confusing name for an important concept. But I don't think that's what we're talking about. It sounds like we're disagreeing with what constitutes "general welfare" as you highlighted. Ok, where do you draw the line in modern society? If you want to invoke the argument "what would the framers have wanted?" then what do you think they meant? Who can limit the definition of "general welfare" now. All you need is a bunch of loud people for any random issue, then it becomes a general welfare issue.

brc 12y ago

So great it see someone on HN who gets it. It's always about productivity, all the time. Increase productivity bad you increase wealth and quality of life. Focussing on job creation is the wrong metric because you can do it by employing people to be inefficient, which makes everyone worse off as production falls.

dllthomas 12y ago

The best way to actually, legitimately create jobs is to find a way to match a need many people have with people who can address it, in a way that wasn't previously discoverable.

malandrew 12y ago

One goal might be to shift efficiency towards those who are most efficient. For example, does it make sense for very skilled professional to go to an establishment to get a massage or a manicure/pedicure? I could easily see those two jobs become 100% itinerant. It means that a productive customer doesn't need to travel and that all those people effectively become their own boss and maintain their own equipment. This also cuts out the cost of real estate, and allows for a reputation system where the best masseuses and manicurists do exceptionally well. Then again, this would be a net gain of 0 jobs, since these people would presumably be leaving employment under the person who owns the real estate. I can already imagine how the cosmetology boards would feel towards such a start up. Those owning the establishments would start pressuring the cosmetology boards just like dispatchers are the ones pressuring taxicab commissions. Do cosmetology boards regulate the establishments, the people or the people relative to the establishment with which they are associated? Another market would be disintermediating personal trainers from the gyms they are associated with. I'm curious if personal trainers would earn more if they paid for personal memberships with the 2-4 biggest gym networks in a geographic region and then advertised which gyms they could train you at. This way customers could search for personal trainers that work out of the customer's gym of choice. Right now PT pay a portion of their earnings to the gyms, and I suspect its a large percentage, relatively speaking. This could be extended beyond personal training to sports specific training (running, swimming, cycling, rock climbing, etc.). [sarcasm]Is the domain trainr.com taken yet?[/sarcasm] Another market could probably revolve around elections, and other regular seasonal/temporary work. Have the volunteers focus on the more valuable labor like p2p evangelism and have the paid labor work on putting up signs (and cleaning them up afterwards). Also, is there a market for in-home caregivers (elderly, disabled, terminally ill) already and special needs caregivers? Would be great to be able to search for people in an area by reputation, experience, special skills/certifications (registered nurse, experience with children with autism, etc.). Basically, any job that exists today where there are local establishments "pimping" out the employee (gyms, homecare companies, etc.) and taking an exorbitant cut of revenue because they have a brand name or prime real estate is ripe for disruption from an online P2P marketplace. You can literally flip through the "gigs" and "services" section of craigslist to get ideas here. I'm also surprised that there isn't a way to hire a cheap paralegal directly to help you find a decent lawyer, negotiate a decent rate and work with that lawyer to make things more efficient. The cost of legal representation could be much cheaper if people needing legal representation could hire paralegals and recently graduated law students that don't yet have a job (tough market) to help you out. Furthermore, it helps out all those out of work law students since it gives them a way in the door with good law firms via their client's pocket books. If a lawyer is particularly impressed with the person helping their client, they may decide to hire them full time. To truly create 1M new jobs, you'd need to make an entirely new line of work (Amazon mechanical turk type stuff), or enable 1M new people to participate in an existing line of work where previously there were barriers to entry (Uber/Lyft/Sidecar/AirBnB). The latter would have the effect of deflating that market, reducing median income so that achieving 1M becomes more difficult.

Spooky23 12y ago

That's the basic, economics 101 goal of a simplistic capitalist. Until a few years ago, the only people really pushing this notion were people in the resource extraction business. Efficiency at all costs is something that's great for you to make other people do. Do you take the bus and walk to work? Do you have an padded chair in your office? Henry Ford was uniquely smart among the "captains of industry" of the past in that he got that his ability to manufacture cars exceeded the economy's ability to consume them. One of his business objectives was for his workers to be able to purchase his cars.

icebraining 12y ago
Yeah, let's imitate Ford, and pay our workers well - as long as they allow their lives to be scrutinized by the company's moral police: The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and (what today are called) deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing." Besides, paying people well and eliminating jobs is not exclusive. Did Ford hire people he didn't need?
- Spooky23 12y ago
  You missed he point completely. Ford was a hard nosed capitalist with fascist leanings. Even so, while living in an era where workers were competely disposable and had virtually no rights, he paid people more than they were theoretically worth.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    I just dislike the Ford adoration, but fair enough. Still, my last statement stands; paying well is not incompatible with hiring few.

andrewtbham 12y ago

I also fundamentally disagree with this post. My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs. I am reading a book about the Shipping container, and it massively reduced the number of jobs for longshoremen and merchant marines. I can also say that working at a big company that is people's mentality. They want to manage a lot of people. That's their goal. Not to create value. And imho the results are often poor. I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. imho the goal should be to find a way for people to meet their basic needs without needing a job. NOT to create tons of jobs.

yannis 12y ago
The RFS never said one million low end jobs and specifically stated they are not looking for companies that would employ one million people. Maybe creating 1,000,000 enterpreneurs?
- andrewtbham 12y ago
  It sounds like they are interested in 2 sided markets, like Uber, or airbnb. I get that part, but the "jobs" part is lost on me. Wouldn't uber be cooler if it used self driving cars!!!
  - paletoy 12y ago
    YC isn't in a position to invest in deep automation, and are good at building markets. And once you build a 2 sided freelancer market , you are very likely to control it when it's automated.
  - prawn 12y ago
    Uber will obviously switch to self-driving cars once that's viable, shaving the on-going cost of drivers.
eugenejen 12y ago
I think you are confused with his proposal. YC is looking for any company that can create demand that requires 1 millions workers to fulfill it. It is not to create a huge company. It has nothing to do with eliminating jobs. It has nothing to do with provide basic living standard. For example, if a new technology that allow us to regrow part of organs easily, but it requires living persons to carry the organs within their bodies until organs mature to be transplanted. Those people may have a job as 'organ incubator'.

eugenejen 12y ago

Well, I think you don't really know what a job is and what efficiency should be. A job is demand that has to be fulfilled by another human being. Demand comes from desires of human beings. We as human beings, can have unlimited desires. We as human beings, are limited by time of lives. To create jobs is to create unlimited demand that need to be fulfilled with trading of time of another human beings. Efficiency is to increase the purchase power of time. Then wealth of lives of human beings. And wealth has to flow, otherwise prosperity won't appear. And desires are limited by our imagination.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
gone35 12y ago
Beautifully, concisely put! It is a shame though your downvoters elsewhere in this thread fail to appreciate your effort at explaining the --admittedly quite unintuitive-- demand side of the macroeconomy.
- eugenejen 12y ago
  Thanks for your appreciations. It is hard for me to explain those ideas as other do. But yes, I feel the current problems is we forget the demand side of economy.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

superuser2 12y ago

>The company would still create the same value to society Ok, I'll bite. It would still create the same value to its investors. No for-profit company ever creates value to society except by employing people or by having secondary effects that result in more/higher-quality employment.

orangecat 12y ago
Nope. See "consumer surplus".
- superuser2 12y ago
  ... And why is that valuable to society? Because then consumers have money to left over to spend on other things. See "secondary effects that result in more/higher-quality employment."

pron 12y ago

> Creating jobs is a strange goal. Why? Who says efficiency should be humanity's goal? Is humanity a machine to be optimized? Are we just evolved cogs, one of nature's crueler jokes, or are we (also) agents that can put up a fight? You know, Dostoyevsky extolled the virtues of intentional self harm -- or spite -- as a person's noblest goal, asserting freedom from "laws of nature". I'm not saying spite should be a matter of public policy, but it's very important to avoid seeing some mechanistic, or even natural, process as a desirable outcome just because that's how things work (this is the naturalistic fallacy[1]). Public policy should be crafted subject to consideration and political debate. > People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value. Says who? That's a peculiarly American view of the role of corporations. Another valid goal for companies is providing sustenance to their employees first, and "value" later. I.e. generating value is just a means to an end. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

pfortuny 12y ago
It also depends on the meaning of "value." In the US it looks like "value" is interchangeable with "cash-able goods," which as you point out is quite restrictive. And, on the other hand, it goes straight against most of companies' "visions" (which are usually non-monetizable).
jsweojtj 12y ago
>> Creating jobs is a strange goal. > Why? Who says efficiency should be humanity's goal? Is humanity a machine to be optimized? I think saying that creating jobs is a goal is more accurately the viewpoint that humans are cogs. Say there's an efficient way to do something, for example: a machine that weaves fabric. If the goal is to create jobs, we could stop the machine and hire people to do the job. In fact, I bet we could force people to do it in a really inefficient and tedious manner that would require lots of people to replace a single machine. The disadvantages: slower. more expensive. more error-prone. people's time-wasting. The advantages: these people have a job so now you have a 'valid' excuse to give people an income.
- 12y ago

lsc 12y ago

>People miss the whole point of companies. The goal should never be providing jobs but creating value. "creating shareholder value" Even if we're ignoring "social good" (which is a perfectly valid "shareholder value") one way to chase profit is to look for inputs that are cheap, and figure out how to turn those inexpensive inputs into expensive finished goods. Right now, low-end labor is quite inexpensive. If you can figure out how to produce something useful using that inexpensive labor, there is profit to be had.