Turns out that $ profit is one of the least gameable metrics.
Not completely ungameable, but for a consumer product manufacturer in a free market it's the least gameable metric invented so far.
Not completely ungameable, but for a consumer product manufacturer in a free market it's the least gameable metric invented so far.
Markets are kind of a dumb thing if you think about it. You take all the qualities of an item and project them into a single scalar we call 'price'. Then use that scalar as a form of comparison.
It's comical when you think about it. Seems we need a better technology now that we have computers.
The share price kept rising while they were investing profits in expanding.
It's far from a fool proof way of doing things, many companies that prioritise growth over profitability wind up with neither, but Amazon managed it.
As for prices, no computer can work out my preference or not for a Mac over a PC, or a iPhone over an Android, or how much quality I will pay for in a bike. Prices reveal this.
Ludwig von Mises said this was why Communism wouldn't work in 1920. He was right.
2. "Free" and "market" are fundamentally contradictory terms. But that point is irrespective of the difficulty of quantifying complexity/heft of tasks and goals.