Hacker News Reader

Comment by hayst4ck | Hacker News Reader

If company A creates a problem that company B is paid to solve, then company B benefits when company A is able to make the problem bigger. Therefore Company A and company B both have a vested interest in the problem continuing to be problematic. Both are in a symbiotic relationship that allows them to both extract a profit while providing no net benefit to society.

This is rent-seeking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking). Rent-seeking is an economic drag and ethically indefensible.

Regulation is how this problem gets solved and it's the only way it gets solved.

View on HN

There was an article on HN recently about government agencies (but also applied to private companies) that are setup to solve problem X and often evolve to, not necessarily causing it, but making it harder to solve.

If it's the one I'm thinking of: the title was about government, but all of the examples in the article were private firms with profit motives. The author implied that government must work the same way as industry, but that's a huge assumption.

The article had no examples of public agencies perpetuating the problems they set out to solve.

Were these private firms funded by the government?

It's because the article and website is stupid, and is trying to make you believe public agencies are ineffective on principle.

Public agencies don't exist because of profit. They exists because of government mandate.

Also the website states it's just a single PHD that claims "I created Effectiviology to provide people with research-based information about psychology and philosophy they can use.", but it's in reality owned by 'Super Privacy Service LTD' according to https://www.whois.com/whois/effectiviology.com.

Don't trust this source.

That’s just another whois privacy service trying to cut down on spam. Every domain I’ve bought has had that offered as a feature.

Finally found it:

Article: https://effectiviology.com/shirky-principle/

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39491863

I also apply the Shirky principle at larger scale when solutions have become an industry, e.g pharmaceutical industry.

But that blog post was wrong an ill informed.

Microsoft is company A and B in one. They sell you a very unsecure OS and cloud environment. And then they sell you security tools to fix the problems they caused in the first place.

Protection racket...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com