Klarinet Archive - Posting 000550.txt from 1999/11
From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Dichotomitis
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 13:09:34 -0500
On Sun, 14 Nov 1999 09:52:24 -0800 (PST), leupold_1@-----.com said:
> > On Sun, 14 Nov 1999 08:59:56 EST, GrabnerWG@-----.com said:
>
> > > If there were no profit, investors would (and do) take
> > > their money and put it somewhere else... I might add this.
> > > In the long run, without quality, you will have no profit.
> > > Without profit, you will have no business.
>
> Tony Pay responded:
>
> > So they're sufficiently intertwined that you don't want to oppose
> > these two things in a discussion. Or even accord them *relative*
> > importances. As a friend of mine recently pointed out about a
> > related dichotomy, the nature/nurture dichotomy -- to speak of 30%
> > nature and 70% nurture is like talking about a lock and key
> > mechanism that is 30% key and 70% lock.
>
> But again, business does not operate this way. Depending on the
> nature of the business (making cars vs. producing fine wines, for
> example), and depending on the business strategy (low cost leader vs.
> quality niche market vs. something in between), as well as the
> relative conditions of the market environment (stable vs. volatile) --
> all of these factors, along with others, combine to do exactly what
> you propose should not be happening: businesses place relative
> emphasis on quality vs. quantity vs. price, in congruence with their
> particular mission and strategy. Some people seem to be making the
> assumption that all businesses strive to produce the highest quality
> product they can. It's a nice thought, but is generally false. The
> level of quality, quantity, and price are all determined by one thing:
> the strength of the market for the product. Business follows the
> demand. If there's no demand for a high quality widget, there's no
> incentive to produce one, much less base an entire business strategy
> on it.
OK, you're quite right.
You certainly makes the issue clear, as someone just acknowledged.
Thanks for putting it so well.
I didn't think it through properly perhaps partly because I've got going
on in my head at the moment a whole other discussion to do with whether
business is a good model for other things -- hence the rather strange
appearance of nature/nurture in the above.
I think we should argue strongly against the attempts to subsume basic
science to the business model, and I also don't think that highly
complicated software should be allowed to be developed and controlled
according to the business model.
The reason for this is that the real world, and now increasingly
computer systems, are both sufficiently complicated for us not to be
able to anticipate the consequences of our actions. An open attitude to
research and development, as in the scientific community, is forced by
the combinatorially increasingly large number of ways in which things
may go wrong.
This is before we even consider the situation with genetic engineering.
When you're talking about clarinets and motor cars, the problems are not
so large.
I appreciate that this is now well off-topic.
http://www.atmos-dynamics.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/mem/papers/LHCE/index.html
..also very interesting about music.
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339
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