Business Models Ruin Everything.
“I bought a hundred points at the point store—so I win.” my 5 year old daughter exclaimed tonight as her ego sought to avoid my certain victory in our nightly game of hallway soccer.
Her little brain has been trained by the iPad games she plays that if you can’t win, go to the store and buy some more points. They’ve ruined games in order to build a more profitable business model.
I wish that this problem of business models ruining everything was sequestered to something trivial like video games—but, really, business models are ruining everything.
And I know why…
Newspapers, Television News, Internet News, Oh my…
I hear folks lamenting the ‘good old days’ of news media. Oh, you mean like the time:
- We were pushed into the Spanish-American war as a result of Hearst’s and Pulitzer’s newspapers battling for readers with with increasingly incendiary headlines.
- When Goebbles’ said “It would not have been possible for us [Nazi’s] to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio...”
- All media today is so tight on budget that they rely on being fed press releases and ‘evergreen’ stories by publicists and experts releasing ‘studies’ that are funded by monied interests that unsuprisingly benefit from their conclusion.
Throughout history every media has been co-opted by the need to make more money. The business model distorts message.
Organizations evolve to take every advantage
Every organization, whether business, political, or even religious—is a living organism, evolving and adapting to multiply and grow. Organizations will always compete, and to win they must manipulate the way people think. For example:
“In 1980, there were about 45 PR workers per one hundred thousand population compared with 36 journalists. In 2008, there were 90 PR people per one hundred thousand compared to 25 journalists. ~CJ
Look at who funds a study, a politician, or a non-profit and you’ll see that money drives the message, an money always comes from successful business models.
This is why we always end up getting things like:
- Cheap sugary carb foods that kill us
- Cheap shitty imported products that move our jobs
- Video games you win by paying for
- Authoritarian leadership
- Social media that shows us only what we want to see
- Shallow sex
- Consuming media that leads to low self-esteem
Business models ruin everything because successful businesses give people what they really want.
People really want to:
- Indulge with cheap sugary carb foods that kill us
- Pay little and get a lot with shitty imported products that move our jobs
- Win faster with video games you win by paying for
- Have their ideas imposed on others by voting in authoritarian leadership
- Feel righteous by using social media that shows us only what we want to see
- Be instantly gratified by shallow sex
- Live their dreams vicariously by consuming media that leads to low self-esteem
The best things in life come from it being hard to get what you want.
I’m writing this as much as a reminder for myself as I am for you—I’ve been feeling so depressed by my future president, my current waistline, how hard I have to work to buy a home in Seattle, and how fast time goes (I’m as old as my dad was when I was in third grade—already?).
Maybe not getting everything I want all at once is actually what’s best for me?
It’s not the business models that are the problem. The problem is that so many of us hand over our money, time, and attention to really crummy things. Business models evolve to take the money, time, and attention that we are willing to give and turn it into money and power for someone else.
We are the problem.
- Pay-to-win video games don’t make us lazy
- Politicians don’t give “them” bad ideas
- Participation ribbons won’t make a kid entitled
Many people are lazy, have bad ideas, and are entitled—some business person just figured out that you could make a lot of money and power by making video games, political parties, and trophy stores to cater to these audiences.
Maybe I should focus on building a business around things that I believe are good and that matter. If there’s a big enough crowd who shares those values it could scale up a lot of good into the world. Maybe you should too…
But first, we should start by knowing what we really believe is good.
