Tim O'Reilly: The heart of what is best in capitalism | Hacker News Reader

Tim O'Reilly: The heart of what is best in capitalism

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38 pointsSato44 comments

This line is great: "profit in a business is like gas in a car. You don't want to run out of gas, but neither do you want to think that your road trip is a tour of gas stations."

It is orignally from another great article of Tim O'Reilly: Work on Stuff that Matters[1]

[1] http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-...

I've used a similar analogy frequently, that profit is to my business as fuel is to an aircraft. I want as much profit as I can get not because I'm greedy but because I want to stay in their air as long as possible, constantly making longer and more adventurous flights.

My biz might be just a little four-place Cessna right now but my goal is to someday be a nice Boeing Business Jet.

The problem isn't Wall Street greed. The problem is that the government rescued the banks with public bailouts, at a time when a true capitalist system would have put them out of business.

You are seeing a delineation between wall street/banks/government which is not there.

The problem IS [wall street/banks/government] GREED

All of Obama's top advisers are GS and banking cartel.

Thus we transfer all our wealth to them.

Just like when all of Bush/Cheney's cabinet (including Cheney) were all from the MIC cartel - we transferred all our wealth to them.

This is 30 minutes worth your time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K...

Just call it regulatory capture, and principal agent problems.

David Icke? The guy who thinks the world is run by alien reptiles? Really?

I'm the biggest conspiracy theorist there is (Conspiracy 0: hijacking the term "conspiracy"), but this guy flips my bozo bit.

That said, his description of fractional reserve banking is mostly accurate; it just seems an odd source when there are so many good video and text diatribes on the subject.

True - but there is not a single thing I can find wrong with this statement. This is one of the best arguments against what is going on right now that I have seen.

There was a time, before the Federal Reserve, when banks were not rescued, but failed. In the 19th century banks failed and there were panics and depressions every decade or two. What we have now is way better. The problem now is that banks can reliably depend on being rescued every decade or so. In the 70's it was loans to SA dictators, in the 80's it was the savings and loan crisis. the it was devaluation of the ruble which took out Long Term Capital Management, then the current mess of housing mortgages and derivatives. At one time there were $60 trillion of worthless paper sailing through the system.

The problem in the rescue this time is that the TARP money went to rescue the banks, not to the middle class that needed it. The "too big to fail" banks got bigger. Glass-Stegall was not restored. The Republicans stonewalled any meaningful regulation. And of course Congress was bought and sold.

Capitalism is the economic engine of our society, but it cannot be allowed to complete freedom without being regulated to conform to the economic and social needs.

Lots of banks fail, a couple every week over the last few years. They are small banks though. The problem is when banks get too big, and there failing would have a huge effect on the economy. That is why banks should not be allowed to get that big, but for some reason no one is interested in changing the laws.

> The problem is that the government rescued the banks with public bailouts, at a time when a true capitalist system would have put them out of business.

Umm, the bank bailouts aren't the big problem. They turned a profit, and since the subprime crisis was mostly due to govt action....

The big problem is the other bailouts and subsidies. They're never going to pay off.

Those who think the bank bailouts aren't the big problem may want to read this famous article, "The Great American Bubble Machine"[1].

[1] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american...

That article doesn't argue that bank bailouts were the big problem. It argues that bank influence, specifically Goldman Sachs, is the big problem. There is a difference.

As I wrote, the bank bailouts weren't a huge money-suck and the subprime crisis wouldn't have happened without govt intervention. (We can argue about why govt intervened, but that doesn't change the fact that it did.)

You can't say either about the other govt bailouts.

Note, I'm excluding the GSE's (like Fannie Mae) bailout from "made money" - that is still losing money.

No True Scottsman, huh?

I always get a prickly uncomfortable feeling whenever a business leader comes out and says 'profits aren't the most important thing'. It's this type of wording that can give life to stupid ideas such as 'you can run a business without making a profit'.

I also lose respect for business leaders who try and paper over their success with motherhood statements like 'I wasn't in it for the money', when clearly they enjoy the trappings of wealth.

People should be proud to state they are chasing a profit, proud to make profits, proud to have successful, profitable businesses. It's impossible to make profits without providing value for other people. Profits (for the most part, over the long run) are just a recognition that you're productive and are providing something of value.

My take on this particular piece is that a focus on short term profits is a mistake, and that a focus on long term value through great products and innovation is the right choice. Because long term value creation should necessarily result in profits.

But I just wish more people would have the gumption to say 'I made a big set of money hats for myself, my investors and my employees, and I feel great about it'.

As a long time small business owner, I can say that "profit" is not the key element, but rather "cash flow". It may seem a minor nit, but I think helps to distinguish between short term profit and long term. Its nice to have a billion in the bank and only focus on long term goals. Few companies have this luxury. For all the rest, we focus on meeting our monthly payroll.

I wish people would stop trying to paint their own motives on other people. There is no reason for him to trumpet that he loves profit if that not his main motive. These guys have money and successful companies it's possible they would make some sacrifices to the bottom line to impact on the world if it if they have that disposition. You think someone like Elon Musk is only thinking bottom line when he has poured all his money into three industries that haven't ever been profitable?

I certainly hope Elon Musk has profit as his motive, otherwise his lifes work will end up in vain.

As O'Reilly said - you need to make it to the next gas station. If Elon Musk wants to launch rockets and make new car companies he's going to need to be profitable in that enterprise, or it's going to hurt a lot of people in a pretty short amount of time.

My point is this - he has to have profit as his main motive or he would fail. If you're going to change the world, you have to last long enough to do so. In order to do that, everyone involved has to be getting out more value than they are putting in. And that is profit.

"he has to have profit as his main motive or he would fail"

Obviously it has to not go under but I bet he'd be happy driving on Mars in his solar-powered electric car if his companies made just enough to get by.

If by "main motive" you mean a minimum requirement then we agree. But for some that's just to get leeway to do the things they really want to do.

This is a stellar example of the muddled-headed thinking I keep posting about.

Define 'just enough to get by'.

Even if investors and employees are in it for a higher altruistic goal, they'll still want a good return on their time and money. Very few people are wont to just burn money so that someone else gets to enjoy playing CEO of a cool company. And even if they do enjoy it for a couple of years, the fun will soon stop.

Profit has to be the main motive for any long-term, successful enterprise. And the really big goals require really long periods of profitability to keep everyone interested and invested, whether with their money or their time.

It was hypothetical if someone with that kind of ambition could make just enough that he accomplished all these great things even if it left him middle class, he'd take it. I agree it would take a huge amount of cash to get there, but the point is the end goal wouldn't be money.

I've noticed by your responses you think everyone who thinks any entrepreneur wants anything besides profit is "muddle-headed." The world is "muddled." Not everyone is playing the same game in life, for some people, money is the game, for some people, money is just something you need to play it. I've noticed some of the former types really want everyone to be playing the same game so they can measure up.

I'm not going to argue any more, because you don't see my point. I'll reiterate once more, in your example: any entrepreneur who wants anything, whether it is a cure for aids, a colony on another planet or just to build a gigantic Hearst castle to show off must first create profits. Thus profits must be their first and primary motive. You can say you did it for whatever reason, but you can't dismiss making a profit as the fundamental purpose of the activity. Everything else flows from the first objective.

Suppose I am craving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Suppose that a spreading knife is an essential and irreplaceable requirement to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Would you say that my first and primary motive, and fundamental purpose is obtaining a spreading knife?

I don't think it's at all deceptive or muddle-headed to say that I'm really just hungry for a sandwich.

There's a "profit spectrum". On the one side of it are money hungry wall-street bankers, who for them profit is the only motive all else be damned.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are non-profit companies. Some live without profit, based on donations, Others live as a "social corp" where all profits go to scale up growth, while keeping their main motive a non profit goal. Some of those non-profits can create huge changes.

In the middle you can also find lifestyle entrepreneurs. For many of those profit is not the main motivation.

So yes, there are successful entrepreneurs who are not motivated mostly by profit.

> It's this type of wording that can give life to stupid ideas such as 'you can run a business without making a profit'.

It is stupid.

The point here is, I think, money is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. And such an idea has been spreading.

I think we agree. But my point is that statements like that from O'Reilly (and Bill Gates, at other times) allow shallow-thinking people to start formulating ideas that businesses shouldn't make a profit.

Yes, money is a means to an end, rather than the end itself. You can't take it with you, and stored money is useless unless deployed as investment.

But there is no other viable way to that end, as much as people like to pretend there is. When we lose sight of this, we slip into muddle-headed thinking and everyone loses out. Eventually, an unprofitable enterprise will lose staff, investors, suppliers and will die.

It's as though we're all riding a train called 'profit' to our destination, but everyone in the dining car is pretending we're really levitating on a magic carpet of good intentions to our destination, because is is impolite to talk about the train that is carrying us along. The 'train' needs to be brought back into our conversations.

It's as though we've traded the Victorian distaste for discussions about sex with a modern distate for discussions about making money, even though everybody does it as much as they can.

> Eventually, an unprofitable enterprise will lose staff, investors, suppliers and will die.

I agree you can't lay too much emphasis on this. I have experienced it at startup, though the CEO tried hard to get out of the way along, and found the successful exit.

Yet, the worst was not running out of money, but the lack of our vision and will to achieve it. Or the vision might have been false, something good for us, not for customers. Anyway, in 3 years, we have burned out.

So I think the most important thing is something keeps you motivated, which drives you to try anything for the vision relentlessly.

But sometimes the value added is not morally obtained. Western countries derive a lot of value from resource rich countries that are impoverished. Unfortunately that value often times comes at the expense of great environmental and social damage done to these countries.

Chasing profits for the sake of profit without regard to morality is bad. As a famous saying goes, the love of money is the root of all evil. It's not true in every case but the spirit of the adage is true and society ought not to forget this.

I disagree with you on so many levels it would be hard to know where to start. Yours is the type of comment I referenced as woolly thinking that comes from people declaring that profits aren't really necessary.

Of course environmental degradation is a poor outcome for everyone involved. But that has nothing to do with making profits. An unprofitable enterprise is more likely to be damaging the environment than a profitable one.

Do you have any data to back up the claim that unprofitable enterprises are more likely to be damaging to the environment than profitable ones? I doubt very much that you can find such data. I'm open minded enough to consider such data.

As an example of my doubt that such data can be found I'll note that oil wells and pipelines in Nigeria are much more likely to leak crude than pipelines in the U.S. Regulations are in place precisely because in the absence of such regulations companies will not engage in environmentally safe operations. Countries that lack a decent regulatory governing structure are the ones that have the most environmental damage from mining and oil extraction.

I didn't say anything about profit being necessary or unnecessary. I said that profit without considering moral implications is bad.

No I don't have any data, because no such data would exist or would be very hard to collate.

I can look at the environmental condition and record of any heavily controlled economy or region, or one where nobody has ever really made a profit anywhere. Chernobyl is a grand example. Google is another - they have the profits in order to implement best-practice environmental standards for their operations and buildings, to sponsor world-changing initiatives. Many things that wouldn't be possible without healthy corporate profits. A struggling search engine company wouldn't be trying to power their datacentres with renewable energy or doing many of their other things.

I've done enough travel to know the filthiest, most polluted places are those where profitable companies don't exist.

Your example of Nigeria just shows that countries mired in poverty and lack of productivity and wealth lack the resources and ability to implement strong environmental controls.

Any oil company involved with a leaking pipeline is not going to be as profitable as one with a pipeline that doesn't leak.

I personally know people who work in the oil industry in developing nations. The popular image of people like this is of cowboys with no regard for the environment, yet they, and the companies they work for, work hard to get things right. But it's not always possible in a corrupt environment where rewards don't go necessarily to those that work the hardest, but those who have the connections.

there are few experts if any on what is moral profit (is a doctor making money of sick people moral? ). look around you. everything you see and use is obtained from earth. there is a cost to mining earth this way and it is not reserved to rich countries.e.g ghost towns in US caused by fracking. beyond this , your statement is too generic to even repudiate.

The comment I made is hardly disputable unless you think that pursing profit is always and everywhere a good thing. I don't know anyone who can't find an example of where the pursuit of profit was evil.

I'm glad I'm getting downvotes on my various comments here. I hope this means this basic idea is getting through peoples conciousness and making an impact, and it's not just 'a downvote for you, I don't agree'.

The fact is, just about everything that you sit on, touch and use was created for and sustained by profitability. From the ISP you connected to, to the device you used, all were designed and built by people using doing their best to make a profit in providing something of value to you.

Somehow we've ended up in a place (again) where making a profit is seen as a dirty business. I would expect to find that if I were posting to a socialist forum. But on a site revolving around startups and technology the last thing people should be doing is treating and using profit as a dirty word, something not to be uttered in polite company.

The fact is, if we're in a startup or technology company of any kind, we have to do things that create value for our customers and investors. It's moral to work hardest and smartest and try and win, certainly more moral than trying to slack off and hope someone else creates the value and masks our lack of effort. And in working hardest, smartest, doing that process we will create value for everyone involved. And that is profit.

Many of the great inventions/discoveries in the history of science were not made for profit. Newton would not have been a better mathematician had he been paid more. Da Vinci would not have painted better had his profit margins been higher. Feynman's insights would not have been more profound had his desire to win been greater.

Profit is not necessarily good or necessarily bad. There are cases where it's incentives are good. There are cases where it is bad.

>But I just wish more people would have the gumption to say 'I made a big set of money hats for myself, my investors and my employees, and I feel great about it'.

It would be great if making money for employees counted as a plus on the balance sheet. Instead, giving money to employees counts as an expense. Isn't capitalism wonderful?

>Isn't capitalism wonderful? Compared to everything else that has been tried, yes it is.

By the way, a balance sheet shows assets vs liabilities. The profit/loss statement is where you expense employee costs, as you should.

Making money for an employee counts as a plus for the employees and their families and communities. So I fail to see that as a problem.

you're productive and are providing something of value.

Not really. People pay will pay for things that are useless, or even hurting them. I don't think I'd be proud of myself for making a profit selling meth.

You should be proud of providing something of value. But making a profit isn't enough to judge whether you're doing that.

Well, that's an interesting side discussion in itself : what is value.

Let's leave the edge cases out of it, and rephrase : if you're pursuing a legal activity using legal means, and you've made a legitimate profit from selling honest products then you should be proud of what you have done. Think Steve Jobs rather than Pablo Escobar. Even then, some would (and do) say that Steve Jobs flogged a lot of overhyped and overpriced products to uncritical acolytes. I would answer that he did so honestly and the people purchased of their own free will, so they did receive value for it.

I'd leave morals out of that it because morals change a lot over time and between societies. As a rough meme - legality is kind of codified morals of a particular society. So if you're doing things within the legal framework then you're OK.

Of course there are douches making illicit profits doing illegal and immoral things. But these people would be conducting illicit activities no matter what the framework they operated under. At least in a free society you're able to avoid them.

legality is kind of codified morals of a particular society.

No it's not. Law has many blind spots even in the most democratic societies.

Some are:

Is using smart advertising a moral thing ? some say it's manipulative, not in the best interest of it's viewer and do lead to harm (for example negative body image of females). But it's legal.

Does creating financial products over food commodities, and thus inflating food prices moral? probably not , but it's probably legal(no wonder, if you consider who writes the rules).

Does a big medical company buying a disruptive startup(in order to kill the disruption) legal ? sure it is. Is it moral ? probably not.

So please don't confuse morality and legality.

You don't have to toss everything else just to have a non-profit motivation. People can have more than one guiding motivation at the same time. Would it be easier on you if he put it another way? "Profit isn't my main motivation, but I understand that the company needs to be profitable to support my primary motivations."

Yes I think that would be a major improvement.

My main thing here is not necessarily O'Reilly himself, but the culture that seems to be coming out that making a profit is a dirty business, and something you don't admit to.

Because of this, many business leaders don't talk about making money, which leads to a lot of people getting the wrong idea about what it means and what it takes to get into business and stay in business.

Sure, you can be Bill Gates and change the world with philanthropy, but in order to get to that position, you need to spend a lot of time focusing on profits to build the wealth.

People want to skip straight to the wealth dissemination part and miss the part about making a profit, which just leads to misery for all involved.

I understand this is an unpopular idea and I've taken some criticism in this thread, but I really take pg's essay on thinking the unthinkable and saying the unsayable to heart. I seriously believe we've got to a point where you can't say 'I made a profit' without society in general looking down at you. And so I want to say the unsayable in this case and force people to really think about this.

>It's impossible to make profits without providing value for other people.

Counterpoint: killing people and taking their money.

Hint: that's not capitalism.

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