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Comment by hliyan | Hacker News Reader

The problem with fast feedback loops is that they filter out long term signals. The problem with data driven decision making is that data is numeric, and the act of counting is necessarily an act of approximation, by which we erase the difference between objects or events in order to bucket them into a category so that they can be counted. So the kind of dashboards that modern managers demand, offer nothing but the most obvious, short term "insights", that you might as well eliminate the man in the middle and feed the data directly into a set of simple decision rules.

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> The problem with data driven decision making is that data is numeric, and the act of counting is necessarily an act of approximation, by which we erase the difference between objects or events in order to bucket them into a category so that they can be counted.

Yes, this is exactly right. To put it another way: When we quantify something, we abstract away everything about that thing that is not quantifiable. So our thinking is only about a tiny aspect of that thing's existence.

> we abstract away everything about that thing that is not quantifiable

It's worse, we simply abstract away everything else, including innumerable things that are quantifiable.

Everyone quotes Goodhart's law, but I think the McNamara fallacy is even more important nowadays. It should be read aloud to every CEO every day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

TLDR: Making a decision based on only qualitative data, and therefore ignoring qualitative information and observations, can lead to bad outcomes. Not everything that is important can be easily measured.

These bad outcomes aren't coming. Maybe we as customers don't like it but it doesn't mean the companies are suffering for it.

For example, McDonald's reported a full-year 2025 net income (profit) of $8.563 billion, an increase from the $8.223 billion reported in 2024.

Spirit of Capital Accumulation be praised!

May 'annual profit' continue to be the only measure that has mattered, does matter, or will ever matter to those that bask in the radiance of perpetual earning growth!

The large multi-national corporation known as "McDonald's" should care about its family, friends, and personal fulfillment instead?

You may have no memory of it, but there was a time when many American corporations had different, broader values. The structure of the present is not necessary or inevitable.

Did they really have broader values or did they just not have the technical sophistication to optimize their operation to this level? Where "values" just a substitute for more limited information?

I think computers have made the structure of the present inevitable.

Imo a bit of both.

The founders [1] of mcdonalds probably did care about say cheaply providing people with enjoyable food. But I would bet soon after they sold [2] the company the actual values changed and definitely a bunch of CEOs down the road the guy put in charge is there for shareholder return.

I personally don't think it's computers. It's unfettered corperatization. Stop giving companies corporate charters to "do all business activities allowed by X state" and instead give them more narrow charters.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Maurice_McDonald

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc

Richard and Maurice McDonald had a small business that almost certainly wouldn't even be around today if they didn't sell to Ray Kroc. The McDonald's we know is a corporation. Corporatization is the process of turning government agencies, public services, or non-business organization into corporations. A more broad interpretation would be applying corporate philosophy to non-corporate things.

McDonald's is already a corporation -- corporatization doesn't apply.

If you don't want corporations to be corporate; I don't what to tell you!

>If you don't want corporations to be corporate; I don't what to tell you!

You don't need to tell me anything. Nor vic2 versa. You don't fight a corporation with reasoned debate, you need more broad tools. Customer demand. Regulations. Competition.

The big mistake here is trying to desensitize the people into thinking they have no power.

> I don't what to tell you!

When this happens to me, I usually solve it by not posting, HTH

It looks like it did and you still posted anyway.

Incorporation was a special privilege the government granted, not a right, so anyone who wanted to form a corporation had to convince the government to pass a law just for them allowing them to do it. Saying "I want to make as much money as possible, to hell with everyone and everything that stands in my way" wasn't going to cut it. Basically every corporation was doing some kind of public service. Maybe they didn't have any values beyond stuffing their pockets with cash, but they had to at least convincingly portray themselves as having broader goals and keep up that act well enough that the government didn't take their charter from them.

Many early corporations were ordinary profit-seeking businesses. Manufacturing, in particular, were increasingly incorporated simply to conduct private enterprise, and states began passing general incorporation statutes for manufacturers quite early in the 19th century.

The special-charter system wasn't some golden age of corporations being held accountable to society. One of the reasons states abandoned special chartering was because it became associated with favouritism, lobbying, monopoly privileges and corruption. Legislators had something valuable to hand out, so connected businesses could seek preferential charters. General incorporation laws were partly an anti-corruption reform.

Thank goodness it's no longer at the whim of the ruler of the moment. Trump can only threaten FCC licenses of broadcast companies, not corporate charters of every industry.

Arguably, there were different values in effect in the past.

There was more emphasis on values like: God-as-god. Country. Family. Courage. Integrity.

The newer values are more like: Money-as-god. Survival. Cats. Dopamine maxxing.

I may get downvoted for mentioning religion in the context of a question about values. But to bring data into it, it's reportedly a fact that "None" [0] as a dominant religious self-identity is indeed a newer/increased phenomenon. It would be hard to argue thats that's not a clear measure of shift in values.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18652908-the-rise-of-...

What do cats do there? I am confused. It is not like they would be prevalent.

Also, the materialism was top ideology in America. It gave us prosperity gospel long time ago.

There is imagined history and real history. They are not the same.

What is real history? I would like to learn it. Not being snarky. Thank you.

> There was more emphasis on values like: God-as-god. Country. Family. Courage. Integrity.

By corporations?!? Because that is what we talking about.

Frankly, if we go back far enough we get all the way to slavery and genocide so rose-tinting your glasses about past values doesn't sway me.

Its called social shaming and its still a thing in other countries. Even for a CEO. This very much is a cultural issue and not an unhalting inevitability of capitalism.

Yes. The people that make up that corporation should care about their fellow man (family, friends) and should take pride in making good things (personal fulfillment).

We are allowed to pierce the corporate veil here.

Who say's they don't? How does this compare to what you do for a living?

>Who say's they don't?

Their workers, customers, and probably some local governments. They might even say it themselves at times.

> How does this compare to what you do for a living?

I make video games. There's always some sausage but I like to think I'm helping to bring joy and spark creativity, not simply make a billionaire richer.

Given my lack of full time work, I'm at least sure these last few years I'm not doing the latter directly.

Really think about it for a second; $8.5 billion in profit. That's an insane amount of money. How many companies with that kind of profit are actively dodging taxes from aggressive accounting, getting deals with local governments, or any other way? Not that the government would spend the extra tax revenue wisely. Instead, what if they took $1 billion of that to increase the pay of the lowest earning employees significantly while not increase the highest earners at all, or paying 100% of health care (medical, dental, vision, and mental), or any of the other things to help improve employee relationships. Then, start focusing on the external things that could be directly improved by taking less profit to improve things for those so much is taken. That's still $7.5 billion in profit.

> How many companies with that kind of profit are actively dodging taxes from aggressive accounting, getting deals with local governments, or any other way?

I don't think it's fair to imply that McDonald's is doing anything shady. They have over 2 million workers (although not directly, it's a franchise model). They make a lot of profit but, proportional to the total workforce, it's about average. Hardly something to be outraged about.

If you spread $1 billion evenly among two million workers, that's about $500 per employee per year. That is roughly 25 cents an hour for a full-time worker. Paying 100% health care would be several billion dollars.

The underlying implication here is whether companies should make any profit at all. If the amount of profit allowed is non-zero, what is the correct number? And if there is a correct number, what do you propose to do about it?

The average American, which McDonald’s workers are on the low end side, can’t handle a 500 dollar emergency.

500 dollars a year to every worker would make a material difference in most of their lives.

Ok. Lets do it. Tell me how?

I’m sorry, was your problem with the implementation of a theoretical lowering of profits for McDonald’s that would result in $500 per employee or your original argument I responded to implying that $500 per employee was immaterial?

I want to make sure I’m kicking my field goal at the right goal post before you move them.

I never stated I had a problem. The original poster seemed almost offended that McDonald's made a "large" profit. So my question is, what is the correct amount of profit that company should make? And, conversely, what happens if a company has losses?

As for whether employees should make more money, I'm definitely not against that. Seems to me, raising the minimum wage and tying it to inflation would be a good start.

I replied to this paragraph that was a subset from your original post

> If you spread $1 billion evenly among two million workers, that's about $500 per employee per year. That is roughly 25 cents an hour for a full-time worker. Paying 100% health care would be several billion dollars.

I responded by saying this, which was the entirety of my post

> The average American, which McDonald’s workers are on the low end side, can’t handle a 500 dollar emergency. 500 dollars a year to every worker would make a material difference in most of their lives.

You responded with this entire post

> Ok. Lets do it. Tell me how?

Was I misunderstanding something? I am fully guilty of responding to a misconceived strawman, or mistaking one poster for another on this site so I have no problem if that’s what occurred.

If what I laid out as the state of responses is however the state of reality than I want to know what specifically you are asking so we can stick to one argument and not weave past each other.

I'm not offended. I'm just thinking of how large $8.5 billion is and what could be done with some of that profit while still keeping a shit ton of profit. It's not like I suggested spending $8.25 billion, I just suggested a measly $1 billion, maybe $2b

Call your representative and push for such legislatio. join a labor coalition in your area, Be it a union, a special interests group, etc. If they can get a local bill to petition, help get signature gathered and donations raised.

Do this for some 3-10 years and there will start to be national movements and pressure for federal bills addressing this. Assuming we don't just kowtow to fascism as we are now in my country.

Such legislation? That's pretty hand-wavy.. what specifically are we asking for here?

I probably do not live in your region, so you'll need to look up your relevant organizations. Which would include existing bills and proposal that can already save a lot of legwork.

My main thesis here is that this isn't something you have to (nor can) do alone. And there are others who probably already have the ball rolling. Joining a larger cause can create a better effect than creating a narrative in your head that corporations are all powerful and paid off your representatives.

Meaningless.

The correct question is: how much more or less would they make if they were applying some other philosophy?

At least in the context of this conversation.

And, an increase in profit of $340 million across 13,882 stores (in the US) is less impressive.

And presumably that $8.563 billion is McDonalds corporate and the franchisees didn’t see all of that gain.

This is meaningless because it's entirely hypothetical. If McDonald's is only looking at quantitative data the "bad outcome" hasn't come for them. It seems quite successful in fact (especially in these tough economic times). Maybe if leads to a massive failure we can come back and revisit this but for now, based on facts, it's working just fine for them.

People like to believe that enshitifying everything will eventually lead to failure because sucks for us. It does suck for us. But I'm not convinced that karma is coming for them.

So if I make $0.10 of profit, all my decisions are validated?

What if we knew that Maccas could have made $20 billion, but ignoring qualitative data reduced their profits to $8.563 billion. Do those decisions still look smart?

Still doesn't look like it is hurting them, but to put it in perspective that's a 4% increase in profit, while 2025 inflation was around 2.5%. Closer to a 1.5% gain in real terms.

> Making a decision based on only qualitative data

I suppose you meant quantitative and it's just a typo

Once I quit my internet service, and someone representing the internet provider called me and asked if I'd agree to participate in an exit survey.

Sure, I said.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied were you with..."

"Umm, can I just tell you why I cancelled my service, as if you and I were both human beings?"

"I'm sorry, I have to follow this script exactly."

So I apologized to the guy and hung up.

In fairness that was a survey you agreed to take. You don't usually get to dictate the format or the questions.

True but you can always withdraw consent

I'm quite certain every McDonald's franchise knows how to hire high schoolers and serve up a bunch of smashburgers to instantly become the busiest franchise in the state.

The problem isn't an ability to understand long term signals. The problem is that if a franchisee tried to generate that signal corporate would filter them right out of their franchise.

aren't they independently owned? so if they wanted to offer a superior service, couldn't they do so? I thought franchise rules were a _threshold_ not a _ceiling_.

Right, but those short term insights can deliver short term value, often lots of it. That value can then be redirected into an index fund and generate real long term returns. There is no financial incentive for QSR execs to look past the next fiscal year, or even quarter when liquidating customer loyalty is so lucrative.

Absolutely.

> it takes a lot of work for a number to mean anything and we largely aren’t doing it

https://desystemize.substack.com/p/desystemize-1

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