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Comment by bluish29 | Hacker News Reader

> No company anywhere close to this size cares about anything other than money

Doesn't this describe every company, is there any company in a capitalist market would care about anything other than money? I might be wrong or shortsighted but happy to be proved wrong.

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In any company of this size there is no owner that can decide he cares about anything but money. There is no actual vision other then short and longterm shareholder value.

"Founders" like Musk and Jobs have a short window where they can move their companies in directions which matches their vision, but that closes quickly after the company goes public and their stock gets diluted enough so that they be ousted.

This is sort of like saying every human cares about nothing than food and air. All companies require money to operate, as humans require food and air, but they can have other goals besides the acquisition of as much money as possible, in the shortest time horizon possible, damn the consequences. I would say that most do. And just as with most people, philosophy and literature and charity and invention go out the door when a human is starving to death or being waterboarded, most companies will put aside all their other goals when they have no money. But, to say that means humans don't do anything other than get food and breathe, or that companies don't do anything but get more money, is such a limited model as not to be of practical use. That doesn't mean it's an uncommon one though!

I knew founders who cared about making a positive impact to our planet in some way. Or to simply give as much people as possible a good workplace and development opportunities. So from my point of view you are incorrect. They mostly all care about making ENOUGH money to not act in a negligent way and having to close at first signs of trouble, but thats not what you wrote.

I, like you, am in the tech world and know plenty of founders who are great people who have visions and want various things. Once they are running a company, it doesn't take long for this to matter less and less. Even in the early stages of a startup, the priority will shift quickly to whatever gets the next round of funding. In the case of a company that has become large, there is virtually zero chance that the wheel can be steered away from whatever the aggregate algorithm used to weigh the priorities of the shareholders and make a decision thinks will be profitable. This isn't in practice always what ends up the most profitable, but it's what will happen because that's how the structure of the organization works

2008-ish was an annoying time of "this isn't just a startup, it's a movement" (to make me rich). Apple says privacy is a human right. I wouldn't say that companies only care about money, but ones who advertise their own altruism are probably not telling the truth.

People - including some people who hold positions like CEO or sit on a board for a company - can care about things other than money. Companies can't, essentially by definition. This is intrinsic to how they are legally constructed

They can't legally claim to care about something besides money (even this I'm unsure about), but if the leadership cares, they can steer the company a certain way.

That's an urban legend, as you suspect, at least in the US and UK - there's nothing in the law requiring to maximise profits.

https://legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-compan...

So it's really only applicable when something egregious like a conflict of interest is at play. Not surprised by that.

"In Shlensky v Wrigley, a famous American case, the firm that owned the Chicago Cubs baseball team refused to hold games at night, even though this would have increased profits and value. The director, Mr Wrigley, argued that installing lights for the games would disturb the peace of the surrounding environment." Good example of it not being 100% about money.

Sure, and as with other optimizing systems, as the process of growth continues, the degree to which those priorities are correlated with ROI will gradually increase, selecting against aspects of them that are anticorrelated from the getgo, but eventually coming for ones that are merely uncorrelated as more investment allows more steering by shareholders, and in the world of private equity, likely some of the merely-weakly-correlated priorities as well (and in some cases, even the business' survival will be sacrificed in favor of something that benefits an aggregate portfolio in a particular quarter)

I think, It's not meant to be a big discovery, but just to contrast the fact what Apple wants you to believe what they care about.

Some smaller companies, particular those without investors and open capital, can have the luxury of caring about the product solely, maybe. But invariably, as it keeps growing, the concern shifts towards pleasing inverstors. They have fiduciary responsibility to them. Constant profit and growth is the premise of capitalism, it isn't sustainable and will invariably result in anti-consumer practices like programmed obselcence and market monopoly.

Every public company, yes.

Private companies can afford not to subscribe to the single core tenet of capitalism which is to "maximize shareholder value".

This whole discussion about what a company cares about is meaningless. Companies don't _care_. Not about anything. Anthropomorphising them like we do for ships, cars, or other machines that we grow attachments to is just delusional. It's a giant, blind, abstraction without thought, feeling or intent.

When real human beings - who can care about things - stand up and speak on behalf of a company, we're falling for a hell of a deception if we think their words represent anything solid.

Companies are groups of people who do have cares and it can make a difference, especially what the ceo cares about.

> Doesn't this describe every company, is there any company in a capitalist market would care about anything other than money?

Sure. There are plenty of smaller companies whose goal is financial sustainability while also pursuing some other objective. It's just much harder to maintain that position when you have millions of investors expecting growth or increasing returns.

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