If you run a business that loses money, who is going to pay for those losses?
I know of many businesses for which making money is not the primary reason to exist. And the majority of businesses do not try to maximize profit at all costs, even when their primary reason for existence is to make money.
Random example: I know someone who teaches singing. She no longer employs other people, but has done so in the past. The IRS agrees that it is a business. She makes money from it and depends on the money from it. She has other skills that would earn her more money elsewhere. If her business made moderately more money but no longer taught anyone to sing better, she would stop running the business and do something else.
If you're going to say that the business's existence depends on the function of making money, as in if that purpose were removed then it would be called a hobby and not a business, then that's a No True Scotsman argument and it's pointless to discuss.
(Basically, I'm with stavros on this.)
There's that strawman again. The rest of your argument depends on that, and so is invalid.
I know lots of people who started businesses with the intention of making money (including me). None of them were willing to go at it "at all costs". I don't know where you get this strawman.
> the pill to swallow is that most employees including managers are grist to the mill
You can't pretend that this part of the conversation doesn't exist simply because you didn't write those words. You were replying to someone who very specifically said this, you were agreeing with them, and to then basically claim "oh I didn't write it, I merely heavily implied it by agreeing with the parent" is disingenuous.
Surely you can give an actual example of a business not formed to make money?
P.S. When you talk about bad faith, I recommend that you do not invent things I did not write, put those things in quotes pretending that I did write them, and then argue with that strawman.
> "Instead, I will respond to the former, which is the original point, and say that there are plenty of mom-and-pop (or larger) businesses, as well as cooperatives, whose goals are not actually to exploit the worker to maximize the amount of money they make, but is primarily to give the owners a good work/life balance, or to help their community, or to be owned collectively by all workers"
Those are not hobbies and will not be categorized as such.
The point is that the goal of making money is not necessarily meant at the cost of crushing employees or considering them disposable. The person you're replying to is saying that's a very US-centric way of looking at businesses (e.g. maximize shareholder value even if it costs happiness) but that's not necessarily the only way of making money. It's very cynical to think it's the only way, because it reinforces the status quo (what are you going to do if you don't like it? That's business, join a commune instead!).
Why? That was never claimed. The claim was that businesses can have other reasons for existing in addition to making money. Furthermore, those other reasons can be a higher priority for a particular business.
Definitely, I didn't mean to imply that every business in the US wants to profit at all costs, I just meant that the culture skews towards that. The US culture towards work tends to have a certain response to cases like one where someone has a popular product/service/business but would rather maximize work/life balance than income.
In other cultures, that's seen as much more of a reasonable choice than in the US, where the response tends to be more on the "I can't believe you're giving up tons of profit for more free time!" or similar.
Mom and pop businesses definitely do it to make money. They aren't charities. They pay taxes on the money they make. And if they don't make money, what are they going to live on?
Non-profits are not out to make money, but (again) they are not considered businesses.
