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Comment by raincole | Hacker News Reader

Good comment.

If you (anyone who reads this) are an employee, remember this is how c-suite people see you.

You're cost. You're something that prevents the business from being "preserved". You're like water or electricity bills from the businesses' point of view. You'll be fired not because you did anything wrong: firing you is nothing different from using less water. Water, of course, can't be wrong or right.

That's why you should have zero loyalty to the business. (You're water bills. Water bills don't have loyalty)

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That seems like a mischaracterization of what the comment said.

Businesses do not exist for making jobs. If we wanted jobs simply for jobs’ sake, then we would pay people to dig holes and fill them in (a lot of government jobs are glorified versions of this).

Businesses exist to fulfill a market need, and every business fulfilling that market need competes in some axis of cost vs. quality.

We are all human. I feel for people laid off. I have been laid off before, and businesses I operated have failed - full stop. I’m talking complicated bankruptcy with the courts and everything. This is not a good outcome for anyone except the court appointed lawyers.

Even when I lay people off, or if people quit on their own for greener pa$ture$, I maintain relationships with people who I respect. More often than not I meet these people again, either hiring them directly or working with them again. The world isn’t zero sum, and being laid off isn’t a sociopathic situation of management vs. labor.

I absolutely don't think that businesses exist to make jobs. You'll never find me saying so. Continue on my own analogy, thinking businesses exist to make more jobs is just like thinking they exist to use water. It would be crazy if anyone said it out loud this way.

One of the reasons businesses (and business leaders to some extent too) argue for reduced tax burdens is because “they are job creators”.

It’s literally an argument many businesses make when lobbying.

Lobbyists don't exist to accurately inform the populace or to profess sincerely held beliefs but to effect advantageous political change.

Indeed. My point is that the “job creator” argument is flip flopped depending on whatever is convenient.

There's not even a contradiction there, let alone flip flopping: That businesses create jobs doesn't imply that job creation is their primary purpose, and getting two different answers to two different questions from two different people simply is not flip flopping.

When businesses are laying people off because they’re prioritising profit and also arguing for tax incentives because they’re creating jobs… then yes, I’d call that a contradiction of actions.

But maybe we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.

Businesses exist to make money for their owners, full stop. Any needs they fulfill are largely incidental.

That's how we end up with businesses like landlords, which fulfil negative needs and extract value without creating anything at all.

Making it possible to live in a house without having the money up front to buy one does provide value.

If they weren't owned by landlords, you'd have the money up front to buy one.

That does not follow at all. How would, for example, a college student with no assets be able to buy a house up front if landlording was illegal?

How do they buy anything else, like textbooks or coffee? They have a student loan - that's how.

You ever met a college student with an Xbox? If we stopped treating houses as an investment and started treating them as a commodity like Xboxes, you could afford one.

I very much doubt it because it takes many times as many resources to create a house than an Xbox. Making housing loans to people with no income or assets is a great way to cause a financial collapse, as we saw not too many years ago.

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