Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by smsm42 on Monday October 11, 2021 @03:08AM (#28825623)

The money they earned in the past are already spent and forgotten. The failure is now. So for the people who got the bonuses in the past it may be worth it (that's probably why they did it), but for the company as an ongoing concern it certainly isn't. It's like eating a lot of unhealthy foods and later getting sick - maybe some people consider it worth it, but most people kinda regret it when they get sick.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by toyg on Monday October 11, 2021 @06:47AM (#28826850)

The thing is, a company isn't a person. In fact, LTDs were effectively invented in order to dissociate company lifecycles from human ones.

So, from a purely rational perspective, if the company makes $100m profit over 10 years then gets "sick", well, job done - you just start another one and carry on. Money doesn't care for future consequences; if anything, inflation puts pressure on disposing of profits quickly while postponing losses (and risk), even if doing so will eventually kill the company.

Extreme "financialization" of our ways of production has given us great rates of efficiency and innovation, at the expense of long-term stability.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by piva00 on Monday October 11, 2021 @08:05AM (#28827395)

> So, from a purely rational perspective, if the company makes $100m profit over 10 years then gets "sick", well, job done - you just start another one and carry on. Money doesn't care for future consequences; if anything, inflation puts pressure on disposing of profits quickly while postponing losses (and risk), even if doing so will eventually kill the company.

This is a purely financial take, not necessarily a purely rational one. I say that because it's pretty easy to dismiss all the human aspect of a company dying, all the suffering it creates as something to not be taken "rationally" but what it actually means is to push the human-factor into the statistics field and be done with it.

I don't agree with this worldview.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by kortilla on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @01:49AM (#28836507)

A company around for 100 years that returns 2% per year is worse than one that returns 100% per year for 5 years and then folds.

Companies shouldn’t exist for the sake of longevity.

[ Parent | on HN ]