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Comment by volgo | Hacker News Reader

Just because it's hard, and the people running them are sharp and smart, doesn't make it any more righteous or normal.

Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp. How to squeeze every unit of labor off the peasants, etc. People went to these schools were probably very cultured, polite, and were funny and pleasant at social events. But history will judge them harshly

Would not be surprised if the same thing happened to MBAs when the tide of history turns in a few centuries. Maybe squeezing profit off of people will no longer be ethical or acceptable, even if your model is complex and intellectual

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I believe the parent’s point was that running a business that is self-sustaining is actually a difficult endeavour, and doing what looks like ‘squeezing customers’ from the outside is actually what the business needs to do to survive. I think this is a reasonable point, considering that no matter what price point many services are offered at, customers will still complain that it’s too high.

Leading me to my question: is your post satire, or do you really consider charging money for a service to be morally equivalent to murdering natives?

But this implies that "squeezing the customer" tactics - where you first focus on growth at all costs, then later find how far you can degrade the service before a critical number of customers quit - is the only way for a company to survive.

I don't see any evidence for that - and in fact, GP proposed/reminded of an alternative business model for WhatsApp.

Actually what I was getting at was pricing - customers who are used to getting something for free will always think that any charge is outrageous. In non-tech examples people think that what are reasonable prices are gouging etc. Not that gouging doesn’t happen, but the public is bad at judging what a reasonable price looks like.

In the specific case of whatsapp, it would be interesting to see what would happen if the service did offer a $1 a year subscription. I’d pay, assuming that data wouldn’t also be used or sold for advertising. But I have a gut feeling that most wouldn’t, they’d rather switch to something that cost nothing, even over something that was very cheap.

Psychologically the gap between free and any cost is large. Which means that for a business, people are either willing to jump that gap or not. The price itself isn’t really a huge factor, it’s free vs not free, so the price may as well be higher than $1, or whatever the minimum viable amount is.

Also the post above was making some wild comparisons that I wanted to point out are silly.

The person you are responding to is talking about the bigger picture, whereas you are focusing on a local detail. While you make a really good point if you consider that you honestly thought you were talking about the same thing, instead you were not. Now it looks like you've subtly moved the goalposts, so that the person you are responding to has an argument that sounds ridiculous. Even though you've not responded to it at all.

Really? Is there a way of equating people with MBAs to conquering invaders that doesn’t sound ridiculous?

I'm not under the impression that you moved the goalpost. Instead I think that storgendibal softened russelbeattie's post a bit by saying that not all business tactics are morally wrong, just like it would be wrong to say engineering is evil because one can build nukes. It's not really a secret that a lot of engineers (programmers) don't like business as a subject of study so this website will be very biased against MBAs, but I am quite confident that those engineers also don't run businesses. The engineers that do run businesses show more respect for the kind of businessman that understands and respects the product and its development process as well as the engineers involved.

> Back in the Colonial times, sharp smart lads went to prestigious military schools and learned the complexities of how to subjugate conquered people. How to efficiently run a slave camp.

Source? My understanding was military academies focus on tactical leadership, military conduct and often an engineering background.

It also depends on what you mean by colonial times, military academies didn't show up in the U.S. until the 1800s.

> Maybe squeezing profit off of people

I think the parent's point was significantly more nuanced than this characterization.

And yet colonialism, organized slavery, etc happened and very likely needed substantial expertise in logistics and management to be pulled off.

That expertise had to come from somewhere.

Well, the prestigious school also taugh all the persons who then led the colonized people to independence, there's that too.

Nope, the oppressors destroyed the native culture, robbed them off their wealth, social structures, and (however) evolved systems of institutions while leaving no venue for the colonized people to prosper. Few who managed to survive and climb through the inevitable mixing of peoples learnt some of the tricks from their oppressors and fought back for independence.

I am afraid your comment sounds like it is trying to find some silver linings in the oppressors malevolence but please try to sympathize (if you cannot empathize) with those colonized.

Well, in some case it was a culture of slavery and piracy, so in those case it was an improvment. Infrastructure, education and sanitation were improved in some cases too.

> I am afraid your comment sounds like it is trying to find some silver linings in the oppressors malevolence but please try to sympathize (if you cannot empathize) with those colonized.

No, I was pointing that the schools decried by the parent were also where the persons who led some of the conflicts for independence were taught in the same school; I was defending those schools.

> Infrastructure, education and sanitation were improved in some cases too.

And I would like to point out that they would’ve improved otherwise had the natives weren’t oppressed. In other words, the oppressors destroyed the ability of the natives to improve. The so called improvements happened despite being oppressed.

As for defending the schools, the same point applies - the oppressors destroyed the systems of education. Had they not invaded the natives and kept there greed to their homelands their wouldn’t be any need for defending these schools.

Edit: a word and newlines.

I'd agree that some of the colonies would have improved had the colonisation not happened, but not everywhere: in some case it happened because the colonised powers did it. And most of them didn't have systems of education before the colonisation.

> but not everywhere: in some case it happened because the colonised powers did it.

Could you please describe me such a scenario/situation where it would’ve or has had happened? The point of my argument hinges on the natives unability to improve due to the oppressors malevolence.

> And most of them didn't have systems of education before the colonisation.

Sure, most if not all of them didn’t have a Europian styled system of education. I don’t suppose you’re saying that the natives didn’t have any concept of educating their children? And yes, it would’ve improved too had they not been not destroyed …

Finally, I think we’ve digressed too far off the main thread of discussion. I feel like I am in the middle of https://www.xkcd.com/386/

>Finally, I think we’ve digressed too far off the main thread of discussion.

We can still go a long way!

I think you should read a book on the history of the British empire. The point you're responding to is basically correct. The idea of the "noble savage" as it was once called is a fantasy. The countries invaded and conquered by the British were typically brutal empires with medieval or lower levels of development, and had been that way for thousands of years with apparently little or no cultural development. The British were encountering local rulers with spears and they had Gatling guns. These societies had no technology, no science, no education or healthcare, primitive to non existent infrastructure of state and oh, they were mostly slave-oriented societies.

Yes the empire was a dictatorship that conquered them and in the early era, bought slaves from the local rulers. In the late eras the empire built infrastructure, education systems, brought modern medicine, tried to teach civilised values like not beheading your political opponents and having votes instead, and in some cases as the empire faded, left the countries in a vastly better state than they were found.

Colonialism is easily one of the most complex and ethically grey areas I've found when studying history. There is no evidence or reason to believe those societies would have ever advanced were they not conquered.

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