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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

>some people look at business as making money for the sake of making money. However other people look at making money as a means to better society.

if the two sides you describe agree on those definitions as mutually exclusive but in union describing the universal set of people, then they are both wrong.

as long as people engaged in a market make their own choices, then money is a direct measure of happiness on the margin. you give somebody your money in exchange for something you want and would rather have: this creates happiness out of thin air.

if you think a better society is a happier society, then going into business to make money is the same as going into business to make society better.

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> as long as people engaged in a market make their own choices, then money is a direct measure of happiness on the margin

That is a big if which is straightforwardly false. This idea of market participants' choices being entirely free rests on the efficient market fallacy [0]. Whereas the reality is that even the structure of a market itself creates friction. One of the main points of business schools is learning how to recognize and take advantage of this structural friction, which business people then conveniently forget when it's time to assuage their own egos regarding their counterparties.

[0] which is basically in the realm of asserting P == NP. The supreme irony is that if the efficient market fallacy were true, then central planning would also work as well!

>This idea of market participants' choices being entirely free rests on the efficient market fallacy

in an inefficient market, you can still choose to transact or not, and you will only do so if you feel you will benefit.

in an efficient market, the net benefit across society will be higher, but nothing in what I said requires an efficient market.

so you are simply wrong.

No, you cannot necessarily to choose whether to transact or not. For life's necessities (eg food, shelter) this is straightforwardly obvious. And you are making this claim in the context of the employment market, which is one step removed from that.

But even in the general case your argument still does not make sense. When we talk of a business providing societal utility, we don't include the business owner themselves in the integral. For example your assertion lets you conclude things like a casino owner who has made a pile of money but impoverished the community has made society better.

>No, you cannot necessarily to choose whether to transact or not.

I didn't say you could, pay closer attention or you will not be able to understand arguments or learn anything.

What I said was, "as long as people engaged in a market make their own choices, then money is a direct measure of happiness on the margin."

however, your mistake does contain a germ of reinforcement to what I said: if you cannot choose to participate in a transaction, you will be less happy, i.e. allowing sellers to offer choices and buyers to make choices will increase happiness in every type of market.

before you make another mistake and go shooting off, I didnt say people will be happy, I said they will be happier, but happier is an unmitigated good.

Try harder to not be a condescending dweeb, or you will not be able to have amicable discussions or overcome your own airtight but inapplicable logic.

I did not "reinforce" the exception of what you said, I pointed out an error in your framing that necessitates coming at the analysis a different way. The context of what you're responding to is a company laying people off - reducing the number of choices in the employment market. We're not talking about the dynamic of someone creating a new business and having to emphasize one or the other, but rather an existing business where the owners are choosing to change things to be closer to one end of the spectrum between the two.

>in an inefficient market, you can still choose to transact or not

And if everybody chooses to not transact, you have a market crash. So... waves at 2026/2027

Society depends on long-term 'happiness'. Short-term 'happiness' often makes society worse.

what you are actually saying is that a certain class of people "know better" than what another class thinks they want.

If you look at financial markets and finance theory, there is no validity to the idea that people are long term blind and short term mistaken. markets discount the future, they are the best estimates of the future rather than somebody with no skin in the game magically "knowing better"

What about externalities? What about policy makers going after short-term gains?

> they are the best estimates of the future

its plausible for companies to be worth less than their assets. While it might be the best estimate its still not necessarily the best one. aka the market can stay crazy longer than you can stay solvent. Markets measure confidence as much as they measure value.

and this explains why the USA doesn't have universal healthcare, or why a generation of the world's population now serve as eyeballs for advertisers using applications specifically designed to be addictive in order to enrich silicon valley startups. You certaintly wouldn't get here if you started with the question "how do we want society to look like?"

Imagine if the owners of modern day factories thought a little more like this [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville

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