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Comment by teddyh | Hacker News Reader

Of those two, of course one is preferrable. But. Either you have a company which does everything and anything, or you have a company which depends on solving a particular problem or set of problem. If your company solves a particular problem, the company depends on that problem persisting. I’d rather the problem be eliminated at some time by future developments, making the company defunct, rather than hoping for a 1000 year-old company. Hoping for a 1000 year-old company which solves one problem is really the same as hoping for humanity to keep having that specific problem for a 1000 years.

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I think that’s a false dichotomy. Most of these old companies are addressing basic human activities, not problems. Unless you thinking eating good food and staying in hotels are problems that ought to be solved?

Most entertainment business are also not solving problems, and yet manage to be extremely successful businesses. See: Disney, Pokémon, video game companies, etc.

Yes, you’re right. (There’s also the “oldest profession”.) But I’d still like to think that many of these actually are problems to be solved, rather than unalterable facts of life. Look what happened to, for instance, secretaries. Or “computers” – i.e. the profession. Regarding entertainment, I don’t see how companies providing entertainment is an absolute necessity; people can be entertained by each other’s company, and have been for most of history and pre-history. Furthermore, the examples you give all rely heavily on copyright for their business models, a purely legal concept without a guaranteed future. If I had to bet on any entertainment company to survive for 1000 years, I would pick one which does things which can not be copied, like live performances, perhaps at specific historically important locations.

”Problems to be solved” is a narrow view of the mechanism of providing goods and services.

Is food a problem? Clothes? Housing? Historically societies that have lacked markets in these (grow your own food, make your own clothes etc) are not something I would call as aspirational models for our current civilization.

So a company that can pivot within their general domain is preferable

In this case, the company was providing a service that was needed for millennia - building temples.

Their structure seems to have been like a private corporation, with special rules and efforts to maintain their ideology and culture. They had the ability to expand outside the current leading families when necessary, though.

When they hit the recent hard patch, they pivoted, but didn’t scale back enough to survive until the next great leader showed up. They fell into the hands of modern corporations, and we all know how that turns out.

"Flourishing and and thrive in peace" can be a good starting point. Specifications will vary over time sure, but there are good chances humankind will still crave for this in a few thousand years if it managed to stay alive as a species.

I seize the opportunity to wish you a great satisfying and fulfilling life in harmony with the rest of your relatives, whoever you are.

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