Comment by pearkes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pearkes | Hacker News Reader

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> What Facebook and Google have done is discovered a village with no water and they plan to bring them cheap Coke to buy when—if their motives were truly honorable—there is another glaringly obvious option: you could teach them to build a well.

Funny you should mention Coke. It turns out that these businesses desiring profits can pretty efficiently solve or make improvement to problems, like distribution, in places like Africa.[1]

Regardless of their motivation, either with balloons or wires, the deep pockets and ingenuity of Google and Facebook will connect people who aren't. And, they'll do it faster and more efficiently then government, charity.

Their "evil" desire for profits will benefit us, as Coke has, apparently.[2]

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/25/coke-applie... (2012)

[2] It's obviously not all roses, with the health concerns, etc. Point is that they solved a problem motivated by profit, and now health organizations, etc. are able to learn from that, directly or just by watching. They're moving us in generally the right direction.

Funnily enough, Coke are already draining the wells of villages that do have them. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/mar/19/business.india1

Yea, let me clear – I'm not saying a huge multi-national corporation is squeaky clean because of one positive thing they've done.

The point I was trying to make is that the motivation of said company may not be to "save the world", but the results (and the impressive efficiency of attaining them) may do a lot of good, even if indirectly.

Efficiency is not the only thing that matters though. As drcongo pointed out Coke is very efficiently depleting the normal aquifers that native farmers rely on in their quest to build a market for their product.

Now if we consider that Coke is a luxury when compared to a necessity like water for drinking and irrigation, we should conclude that a luxury that precludes a necessity is superfluous and should be prohibited. That includes prohibiting "efficient businesses" when their actions to earn profits negatively impact the basic level of life.

If Coca Cola is depleting a shared resource, then there is an unpriced negative externality. The solution is for the government to transfer some of the gains from the new more efficient system to those worse off under the new equilibrium.

This can be accomplished by taxing the corporation for its use of the aquifers, and transferring the payments directly to those that lost use of their wells.

The end result is that everyone ends up with more wealth than they had under the old system.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. ~~ Adam Smith

Positive results occur only when those companies are well-regulated, else exploitation is the most probable outcome. If companies companies can exploit and make more money, they will usually go ahead with that.

It's the same thing Pepsi is accused of as well:

http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2011/pepsipositivewater.ht...

"Pepsico, one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world, has begun claiming that it has achieved "positive water balance" in India, that it is "Giving Back MORE WATER Than We Take".

Wonderful as it may sound, Pepsico's claims of achieving "positive water balance" simply do not add up."

You cannot use Coke as an example. They have a strategy that can aptly be described as "profits before people". They've hired terrorist groups to kill workers who've done nothing but try to organize a union to have enough money to feed their children.

http://killercoke.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Coca-Cola http://colombiajournal.org/colombia73.htm

It's like saying that the mining companies in Virgina have done nothing but help the people in that region, forgetting of course, the Battle of Blair Mountain, or the wages, or the treatment, or the pollution.

Some companies actually care. But Coke does not. It will never. You speak about the solution to a problem being motivated by profit and that is exactly what the unions were, a problem that was solved by the need to profit.

Some companies need to be stopped. To be taken down. Not because they produce a bad product, but because they are to far detached from "the human condition", and therefore see people as simply an obstacle to their profits.

Here is a TED talk from Melinda French Gates talking about exactly this: http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_french_gates_what_nonprofit...

Hey pearkes, your reply was intelligent and thought provoking. You've made a valid point, provided sources and had a structurally well set out argument. But I just can't help myself to try and preserve the English language and point out the faux-pas I see when intelligent people comment. Please don't use 'then' when the correct word is 'than'. It shits me to no end. I really hope that was a typo and if it is, do excuse me. If not, don't take my comment as malice, please take it on board. I love to see a great comment become bulletproof/immutable, without dissenters picking holes in it because of bad grammar. Sorry if I've gone a bit overboard with your comment over one word! It really just is a compulsion of mine to keep 'then' and 'than' pure! Kudos to you otherwise though.

HA! I literally caught myself doing this yesterday.[1] It's a terrible habit. My mother would agree and give you a high five. :)

[1] https://twitter.com/pearkes/status/369868903456862208

In other words, they have permission to make mistakes, because we have lower expectations of them? If that's the case, you're doing us all a disservice by telling us they're not evil after all.

No, I think I may not be making myself clear.

Good regulatory structures, like we've been trying to develop alongside the emergence of the free market as "the way", are important, along with the consumer being keenly aware of where there product comes from, the morale implications of buying such a product, and so on.

However, it's hard to debate that the undeniable force of a humans desire to move _themselves_ forward (or their company, for the sake of themselves) has taken us up and to the right in situations like these.

> (or their company, for the sake of themselves)

But not their governments? Isn't "America is number 1" still a profit motive?

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