Hacker News Reader

Comment by ElevenLathe | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the premise but not the prescription, which boils down to "Find any profitable business at all, even if you find the product you're selling intensely dull or harmful." This is stoicism applied to the worst kind of Roundheaded/Puritanical, market-worshipping capitalism. It winds up teaching you that the needs of people are irrelevant, and only the needs of the market matter.

View on HN

I wasn't totally clear on the prescription. But yeah. Loving coffeeshops isn't really a great reason for starting one. On the other hand, if you despise coffeeshops and the people who frequent them, you almost certainly don't want to start one even if they were good business opportunities.

> It winds up teaching you that the needs of people are irrelevant, and only the needs of the market matter.

The market is simply people's wants+needs in the aggregate

The market expresses the needs of the consumers. But the producers also have needs, including needs not easily expressible in dollar terms.

Actually I don't think the author was trying to be super prescriptive. His writing is actually pretty muddled, but the main points I got were:

1. Focusing on your idea of ideal business rather than just running the business can be constraining in a way that kills the company

2. Maybe that's ok, because maybe your team doesn't want to optimize for business at any cost vs. a defined mission

I think some rewrites would have helped with this article

Well, the needs of people include food and shelter, so if they can't meet those (because they followed some "passion", which for many young people is a BS fashion "lifestyle" thing that they don't even fully care for and don't really want to pay their dues to get there, just want it because it looks "cool") capitalism wins even more...

In capitalism, it is a fact that the market predominates human needs. Your feelings don't change that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com