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Comment by nitrogen | Hacker News Reader

Quoting a good but dead comment for visibility:

citrik 10 minutes ago | link [dead]

I don't think the "in business to make profits" part is entirely true. Apple and Tesla are both leading examples of companies that are out for something other than profits first. You can say that shareholder interests and publicly traded companies require ... but at the end of the day those are two companies that don't let capitalist dogma drive their path. I wish there were more than a handful.

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I've always thought that Apple is driven by wanting to control its own destiny and not have the short term interests of the market dictate its decisions. That's why it is stockpiling cash and hesitating to pay it out to its shareholders.

Apple and Tesla just want to make great stuff. Not just great, esoteric stuff, but products that are also accessible to the mainstream. The profits are just a way of keeping score and giving them options for the future.

They're kind of like the Beatles, who as an organization always knew how to do things big commercially. But commerce is never what drove The Beatles. They understood that winning in the marketplace gave them more leeway to dream bigger and bigger.

It's easy to say, "why would a company want to exist besides to make profit?" But I think a company can be a creative outlet for its employees and shareholders, just like any other medium. The profits just ensure they have more creative control in the future.

I do not think Apple is an exception to the rule that "ALL public companies are out to make money first and foremost". Remember Jobs was outed because they couldn't see his vision? What happened was they then failed and were later sold on his vision bringing them more money so they put him back in charge. So while individuals have a vision, the corporation only sees green. Everything else is a strategy to achieve it. If you believe that, it follows that internet companies sue each other not because they aren't adults, but because patent law is broken and they are, by their nature, obliged to take advantage of it.

There are a million reasons why I really want to like Apple. But I can't, because they use mostly trivial patents offensively against their competitors. That's not controlling one's own destiny, that's forcibly imposing one's will on others.

It's fascinating how any post even mildly critical of Apple manages to get downvoted.

I'm not a fan of Apple, but down-voted you for the fact that your comment isn't relevant in the chain. Yes, Apple's use of patents sucks and I too hate that, but it's not a contradictory point to the opinion that they "try to control their own destiny", so all you've done is chuck in an anti-Apple issue where it wasn't needed.

Comments like that don't do anything other than push Apple fanboys to champion them even more, followed by Apple haters to criticise them even more.

I believe that the various employees at Apple and Tesla, like lots of employees at lots of companies, are there because they enjoy what they do and want to make and do great things. That includes technical and executive staff.

But the overall business goal is to make money, because unless they're making money they employees will not be able to continue making great things or doing great things.

This seems about as meaningful as saying the employees' overall goal is to eat food, because without food their bodies will not be able to continue doing great things.

Perhaps the point being made was that the individual motives/goals of the employees are irrelevant to assessing the overall motives of the company as a whole. Personally I'd say it's whatever the CEO's goals are, but shared agency is a weird thing.

What are Apple and Tesla trying for, if not profits? Both are certainly great at leveraging marketing and PR announcements like this to appear as some kind of shining pillar of goodness, but at the end of the day they're both businesses.

Saying that all corporations are equally trying for profits above all else is kind of like saying that the only purpose of living is reproducing. It grossly oversimplifies the situation, despite the fact that some corporations do seem to focus only on profit, and some humans to focus only on reproduction.

If I had said that, then yes, it would have been quite foolish. But I did not say that all corporations are striving with equal fervor, nor that they focus solely on profit.

All companies strive for profits, but some take a more short term view than others.

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