I don't think anyone should be maximizing profits. Price should be modest in a way that's good for everyone
I don't think that it is useful to enforce this idea with death penalty as punishment.
"maximizing profits to the exclusion of absolutely anything else" is a bad idea, but nearly noone does that anyway
programmer
10mo ago
But once the business stabilizes, if they are making more than 20%, the executives all get.. executed.
The proper way to solve this is to eliminate blockades to proper competition and to allow other to start competing business.
Not to execute successful people. For start it would hit scary/niche businesses.
programmer
10mo ago
I'm not a fan of maximizing the numbers going up and to the right.
So what? That is basic supply/demand curve: you can either buy product (what give them signal that price is too low or right and likely can be increased for greater profit) or do not buy product due to high price (what gives signal that it can be maybe reduced for greater sale volume and possibly increased profit)
programmer
10mo ago
a materialist can never be free because he will always be a slave to the material
what you mean by that? Do you really think that just because someone is atheist/materialist then credible death threats will force them to do anything?
Why aren't Google and Facebook ads a lot cheaper than they are since it's all built on dirt-cheap software?
No it is not.
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it is not built merely on software - you also have infrastructure, useful part of management, lobbying ...
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software is not dirt-cheap - producing it is extremely expensive
Price isn't determined by value created. Nor is it determined by supply/demand.
Since when price is not determined by supply/demand? (with exception of cases massively distorted by legislation, but we do not have a lot of price controls enacted by legislation on software)
So air is pretty valuable. The only reason for its cheapness is its absolute abundance, not the value it creates.
Not only. If someone would tried to charge people for breathing they would be likely voted out/executed/laughed at, depending on a case.
Why doesn't water have high profit margins?
Because reasonable people setup politics in way that fundamental goods such as water and air are provided to general population at negligible costs (does not apply to some unusual cases, like some war zones but even there attempts to provide it are typical). If this would not happen, then you get extremely irritated population. Often willing to go into revolution outright if no reasonable alternatives exists. See also food riots etc.
Look at lists of bankrupt startups, for example. Or Spotify, Snap, Pinterest, Block (Square). Or Uber and WeWork if you count it as a software company.
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