> When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits
Christ, this Superhero CEO bullshit has to stop. It is beyond absurd. Is the multi-hundred X income multiplier really insufficient, they need their egos stroked constantly, too?
I have co-founded a startup, and otherwise have worked at them for almost the entirety of my adult life. I know how much work, risk, and pain is involved.
But this apparent need for Glorification of the Supremely Worthy Job Creator nonsense is just cultish and gross.
Society would be better off glorifying entrepreneurs than instagram celebrities.
Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
Hey now, those Instagram celebrities are "influencers". They're entrepreneurs too.
I don't think either is particularly worthy of "glorification". I'd reserve glory purely for people who help other people without much monetary reward.
So someone like Henry Ford who helped popularize cars gets no glory, but someone who dedicates their life to running an orphanage for free does?
Sure the latter is important, and we should talk about them too. But civilization progresses due to risk-takers like Ford who spot an opportunity and dogmatically pursue it.
Because we don’t need to glorify pursuits that aren’t advancing society.
I’d rather we had another newly minted billionaire employing 60k people with middle class jobs than one more man who helps old ladies cross the street for free.
It's clear we have very different ideas about what "advancing society" is. I tend to think that people like MLK are the ones that advance society. The man helping old ladies cross the street is advancing society. Successful businesses advance the economy.
A billionaire who employs 60k people hasn't done anything altruistic. It's a business, not a charity. The skills and time of those 60k people made the billionaire a billionaire. Why would I laud either side in a fair exchange?
I might praise the skill and foresight of the billionaire. I might praise the skill and hard work of the workers. But neither is "advancing society". They're pursuing their own interests.
Because just keeping the economy going is advancing society. It’s the base that keeps all of the researchers fed, clothed, warmed, etc. Anyone contributing to keeping that functioning is critical.
The only people who don’t care about the economy are ones who haven’t lived through a truly bad one.
It’s not some thing that just happens in a vacuum to make people rich. It’s what drives 99% of the production of all goods and services in the US. The endowments for all of our top research universities depend on the economy, etc etc.
You call it “just a business transaction”, but employing 60k people with good paying jobs in a financially sustainable way is incredible because it means they are producing more than the value of all of those salaries to the wider society. Producing a surplus is how we advance.
You can argue that some businesses are leeches because externalities or whatever, but that can be fixed with taxation. When it comes down to it we need to operate at break even or a surplus as a society or we are fucked.
Henry Ford was literally an inspiration for Hitler and other high level Nazis for his stance on 'the Jewish question'. To the point that Hitler kept a large portrait of Ford in his office, and specifically called him out as an influence on his thoughts on Jews in Mein Kampf.
So yeah, he shouldn't get glory, but instead only be looked at as an example of 'how to make a bunch of money'.
The accumulation of wealth only serves as an example of the accumulation of wealth; the opinions of those accumulating are quite often orthogonal to any other consideration.
Sure and I’d rather society glorify those who decide to start things - mom & pop shops, new products, services, etc. than someone who takes photos of themselves to create an online persona that they go on to monetize.
There's often a thin line. A lot of these influencers end up peddling products or services of their own- after achieving fame, it's best to diversify one's business. And the online persona do at the very least provide a service to the public: entertainment.
> Society would be better off glorifying entrepreneurs than instagram celebrities.
How about that happens after they retire at 80? That would be a good balance. You glorify an entrepreneur and soon enough he'd be pushing BS vaporware products or using his cult of personality to raise endless equity at absurd valuation or outright scamming the government (Musk cough cough...conman cough cough)
I wouldn't have chosen the term noble either, but remember there are some non-native English speakers here.
Fundamentally, people don't start companies for social status reasons - if anything, social status is the reason not to quit your comfy executive job at a large tech company and instead have to work out of a co-working space.
And since your own description of your professional career implies that your startup didn't make you a billionaire, I really don't understand why it was necessary to bring up the "multi-hundred X income multiplier" fallacy.
When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? The ideal business would employ zero people, have zero expenses, and make a 100% profit margin.
From a purely business perspective, every job created is an inefficiency. No one sets out to create jobs when they start a business. They set out to make money and create products or services of value - in that order. Employing people is an unfortunate side-effect of that.
I agree 100% and I wasn't trying to contrast free markets and collective markets. I just dislike the virtue signaling around "job creation". It's not virtuous at all.
We fail to acknowledge that "job creation" benefits the business, because it helps them earn revenue or reduce costs. Ain't nothing noble about hiring someone to do a job. It's a business, not a charity.
> The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well
The free market does not encourage pursuing action where the benefits accrue to people outside of the transaction, but it does encourage actions where the harms are so externalized.
A hypothetical optimally regulated market systems with Pigovian taxes and subsidies to internalize externalities would in theory have the effect that pursuit of private gain would at least not be adverse to the common interest, but that’s very far from a “free market”.
Externalities are costs dumped on others who didn't agree. Hence taxing externalities and using the revenue for the common good corrects for that. Hence it is free market.
> Externalities are costs dumped on others who didn't agree
Yes.
> Hence taxing externalities and using the revenue for the common good corrects for that
That's the argument for Pigovian taxes and subsidies. The typical “free market” counterargument is that the government taxing and spending for the common good to correct that:
(1) violates consent and does not take into account whether and how much the individual “beneficiaries” would be willing to pay when taxing the public and spending for Pigovian subsidies,
(2) does not compensate for lack of consent or compensate the individuals harmed what they would be willing to accept to consent to the inflicted harms when collecting and spending pigovian taxes.
And, therefore, that the correct policy is for individuals who would benefit to subsidize third party action in place of Pigovian subsidies, and seek individual remedy, e.g. via the courts, for unconsented negative externalities.
> Hence it is free market.
That it compensates for what sone people see as a problem in unregulated markets doesn’t make it “free market”.
Not true at all. Some employees can create profit if you could hire more of these employees you jump. Sales people are easy to measure, if you could hire 100 or 1000 people who make double what they cost you do.
If you want some other area of your company strong you invest in that area. An lawyer during a period where the public is sueing you pays for itself.
Hiring a developer to fix a login issue saves refunds.
A lot of jobs seems less important but they provide support and are net positives. Having a server guy means you have a working server. Having a marketing guy means new leads are coming in. Having more sales people means converting more of those leads.
The ineffiency comes when you have too many people in one department waiting on an understaffed area in some other part of the business.
> Some employees can create profit if you could hire more of these employees you jump
And that's my point. Every hire a business makes is to increase revenue or reduce costs. Employment benefits the worker, but it also benefits the business. If a business could get the work of that employee done without hiring that employee, it would happily do so.
If two parties partake in a trade that has mutual benefit, why is either of them "noble"? Why aren't we calling the worker "noble" for providing the business with their skills and time?
Your idea of business and what entrepreneurs want is simplistic. You must know it will be easy to find people who don't fit blanket statements like this.
Even if you think this is the natural inclination of the public corporation, not all companies have to go public and not all investors in public companies care about nothing the company does besides make profit. It's a world of humans we operate in, not some kind of logical optimal point.
Do you disagree with my central thesis that businesses employ people almost entirely to increase revenue or cut costs? The presence of a few sinecures in some companies doesn't change this basic fact.
Yes I disagree and not because of people slipping through the cracks or something. I was referring to people and companies who have a mission. For example to help the blind to see or connect the world. Or the many many small businesses who seek to improve their local region and employ people.
Perhaps you're thinking of the pressures on management of the fortune 500 or something, but that's a far cry from sweeping claims like "almost entirely" or "every job". If you want a job at a place with more of a conscience or whatever, they are all over the place. Especially among startups.
> For example to help the blind to see or connect the world.
And if they could lower costs by employing fewer people, they'd have more money to spend on helping the blind see or connect the world. Alternatively, they employ more people because they believe it will allow them to help more blind people or connect the world better. The point is, they don't hire people for the sake of giving them a paycheck. There's something of equal value expected of those people in return.
> Or the many many small businesses who seek to...employ people
Which ones? Which business has "employ people" as an objective to be maximized? How does it even manage to stay in business working like that? (Note: I'm not talking about businesses that make serious sacrifices to minimize job losses in a downturn; that's praiseworthy. I'm talking about businesses that have headcount as a primary metric of success.)
And if pure job creation is soooo morally good, how do you feel about a government job guarantee? They have that under a number of communist or socialist systems. So is communism or socialism morally superior to capitalism?
Serious question: if you hire a babysitter for date night with your partner, do you feel virtuous about creating employment? Or do you see it as an exchange of some money for a service? If you do feel virtuous, you should re-think that.
Another serious question: is automation immoral? It puts people out of work, after all.
Try using google. Search for companies with a conscience, or companies that give back, or entrepreneurs who's goal is to create jobs in a poor area. I personally know a few.
And my point is not to get drawn into an argument about economic systems or morality, but simply point out your lack of accuracy in describing reality.
>When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"?
When it stops getting politicians elected. No one wants to vote for the person who assures them they will do everything in their power to put them out of work and transfer their value directly to shareholders.
Not all founders work hard. Not all founders are revolutionary. They are not lords and do not deserve worship. Altruism deserves praise. Employment deserves payment.
There are multiple meanings to the word noble, and you have chosen one that makes little sense in the context of the rest of the comment. It is hard to read this as anything other than a bad faith argument.
When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??