Thats an interesting sentiment to me. I dont have much trouble believing in the work, even in for-profit companies. For me, it is about the end product, and if it makes the world a better place or not. If it is net positive, than the work (as a whole), is meaningful. Everything beyond that is just degrees of efficiency.
I conceptually like non-profits, but that seems tangential. Why would I discount my work due to comparison with a hypothetical alternative that is more efficient at doing good.
Nothing wrong with blogs, but I think it’s useful just to be real what it is we’re doing. I don’t think there’s a moral obligation or a unique social benefit to creating WordPress.
You can enjoy your job, and I do too, but I don’t claim to be doing anything extraordinary.
Oh, I agree. I just don't think believing in the work requires it to be extraordinary or ground breaking. For example, you can believe that growing potatoes is beneficial work.
Of course, as stated, "believe in the work" is an imprecise sentiment. Believe what exactly? They probably don't believe it is bad tho, haha
>I dont have much trouble believing in the work, even in for-profit companies.
One of the things I liked about selling software is the knowledge that customers do value your software. If they didn't then they wouldn't put their hand in their pocket.
If you replace the word "software" with the word "Fentanyl" in your sentence, do you still like it?
The sentence is still true regardless of whatever noun you put in it. If the noun itself changes your mind then you should either clarify or reconsider your position
I feel the same way about drug making. Customers might wish new drugs were cheaper, but they are free to with cheaper options or generics. Meanwhile, today's blockbuster will be tomorrow's generic, and progressively more lives are saved.
That may be true when we’re talking about investing in new drugs, but a whole lot of the pharmaceutical industry engages in rent-seeking behavior, and people are often not deep thinkers so their natural inclination is to just throw the baby out with the bath water.
The rent seeking is pretty negligible when you zoom out in time. It is extremely hard to find a specific medication that is still on patent 20 years after approval.
I think people are generally confused by things like insulin, where there are newer and better versions coming out continually, despite it being invented in the 1920s.
So how does a diabetic get one of the older, worse insulins that they can afford? Certainly that's preferable to the better insulin that they can't afford.
At Walmart it is $25 for 1,000 Units of Novolin N [1], with no insurance or prescription. 1000 units is about a month for a lot of people. Novolin N is a third or 4th generation Insulin approved in 1950.
You can get 1000 units of Humalog (Approved in 1996) for $43 at walgreens or most pharmacies (or 19.99 with a Walgreens coupon) [2]
The more recently approved version of Insulin Afrezza, (approved in 2014) costs about $2,000 for a monthly supply.[3]
There has been a fairly consistent march of insulin improvements since the first versions were sold in 1926. [0]
This seems like a pretty big "if". Arguably, Automattic is better than most for-profit companies since they develop a FOSS product, and I think you can make an argument that any sort of FOSS makes the world better.
OTOH, it's not clear to me that making it easier and cheaper to blog or host websites makes the world better. I'm sure there's lots of people using WordPress and similar products for horrible things, like tobacco companies, arms manufacturers, animal ag companies, etc. And that's not to mention the no doubt plenty of personal users who are blogging about conspiracy theories, white supremacy, or Hindu nationalism.
I think the best case for most software is that it's net _neutral_. I work at a database company. Our products are used by many, many different companies, non-profits, and governments. I think some of our customers are horrible, some are great, and most are neither. But that would be the case for me at nearly every software company I might work at.
These casual calls for censorship are really dangerous. Every idea that we take for granted today started as something that was justifiably censorable for the social standards of the time (civil rights, women's voting rights, etc).
If Billy Bob wants to out himself as a white nationalist, I'd rather he do it out in the open. If it's really a terrible idea then it won't get any traction.
When you censor these people it gives them even more reason to get angry and people start supporting just to fight the perceived injustice. This was a key driver in Jan 6th.
I would phrase it as "I'm not sure whether making it easier for everyone to spread their ideas is a good thing." But that's _still_ not a call for censorship.
I don't think the plan that software is not neutral is any more supportive than it is good or bad. If anything, neutrality seems extremely unlikely because if you were to total all of the impacts, it seems exceedingly unlikely that they would perfectly sum up to zero.
That said, you are right in that these judgments certainly depends on your mental model of the world. Ex. Are blogs and websites good or bad. A proponent of radical back to the trees movement would probably disagree. I tend to think logs are a good thing for the world
There’s a lot of anti-capitalist brainwashing these days that exists to make you just feel guilty about the social/environmental effects of everything that isn’t free.
Being relatively far-left, much of the tech industry is indoctrinated into it.
It seems to them like a not-unintelligent, non-controversial, or even obvious viewpoint because they’ve been swimming in that water their whole lives. It’s a first principle to them and they don’t even know it.
I conceptually like non-profits, but that seems tangential. Why would I discount my work due to comparison with a hypothetical alternative that is more efficient at doing good.
>especially one that just makes blogs
What's wrong with blogs? I like blogs.