No we shouldn't. In fact we should denormalize a lot of dysfunctional business models, the transactional, excessively financialised, dehumanised business that has become the norm.
A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village. We dont want ephemeral families, we dont want ephemeral communities.
What we have is not working (pun). The overall drift of the last decades has led to an ephemeral society, made us unhappy, insecure, unstable. We need to go back to more grounded forms.
Businesses, Families, and Villages are fundamentally different creations. Unless you are going with the "company town" idea of a business. A business has a many to one relationship in regards to effort and goals. A Village has a many to many relationship. And a Family has a one to many relationship (though admittedly, at a certain scale, villages and families becomes very similar, but I think that's because a family naturally grows into a village given enough time). If a business has a one/many to many relationship, then it would be aimless and probably be a terrible business (as such things are determined).
There is a reason society has created these as distinct types of entity, because each has a strength that it serves and they are not interchangeable. So while I agree that ephemeral families and communities are not good, that doesn't impact the value of ephemeral businesses.
For the record, I'm undecided on ephemeral businesses, but I think its a valid conversation to have and might yield interesting insights.
There are plenty of ephemeral communities that work. There are conferences, conventions, festivals, and sporting events. Lots of them are run by permanent organizations, but many are run by temporary organizations for each event.
A good example is science fiction Worldcon where there is permanent org that does selection of place for each year and each con is run by local non-profit.
A historical example was trading expeditions where each trip of sailing vessel was financed separately.
And attending people travel on foot, sleep in tents, hunt and gather their food while the conventions are held outside in a clearing of the woods or you need something non-ephemeral such as hotels, restaurants, roads, etc.?
The vessel was also (hopefully) non-ephemeral and lasted for many expeditions, but needed repairs, maintenance, etc. and likely its captain and crew were capable of sailing because of the years of experience.
While organizing a convention or a trading expedition can be ephemeral, it is only possible because all the other non-ephemeral and needed businesses exist.
I think we all will be happier if we stop treating the vast majority of our life as a monetary transaction. If you accept being a disposable cog, you become a disposable cog.
"Family" is an exaggeration, but work as a meaningful, socially and emotionally enriching activity is not a luxury. Its what most people would be more comfortable with.
There is nothing inevitable in the current shape of businesses. They are, ahem, ephemeral optimizations, based on very specific contractual arrangements.
> A business is group of people building things together.
Disagree. A business is an operation meant to make money for investors. Things that call themselves businesses and don't do that over a period of X are failing, as businesses, for the duration X.
A business is an organization, and organizations don't have to be businesses, even if they share some of the same attributes such as concern for expenses, desire to gather extra resources to protect against uncertain events, etc.
Some organizations that are businesses maybe shouldn't be businesses, but they'd be OK as organizations.
Stable organizations would be great. The name for ones that stick around a long time is "institutions." They need stable physical places and surroundings, which is hard when land and real estate is considered an investment vehicle and the value is constantly increasing.
> A business is an operation meant to make money for investors.
please stop repeating Friedmannite vacuities as if they are laws of nature. What exactly is a business is defined by contractual arrangements that have nothing inevitable about them. Nothing.
Money did not exist before it was invented. Its a social construct and actually idiotically simple. "Investors" did not exist before the invention of the corporation and the countless legalities, contracts, incentives and behaviors that shape it.
A business is fundamentally a group of (non-related) people building something together (a service, a product, something desirable by others). Obviously some quid-pro-quo is required for them to be incentivized. Everything else in how the business is structured is up for grabs. The employees can be owners. The business can be non-profit. The extent of liability of members varies. The expected lifespan may be "eternal" or "ephemeral". Etc.
I think if/when we start looking at our organizational arrangements with a critical eye instead of being dazed and confused we'll enter a better period of social and economic development. The prime objective is to have as many people be as happy, as productive, as creative as possible, for the longest periods of their lives. We are very far from that.
To clarify, I think groups of people building something together is valid and doesn't have to be in the context of a business as per my previous post, and maybe should be done more often.
Your first post sort of conflated "business" and "family" and no ... that's a bad thing. Businesses shouldn't get to call themselves family. I don't want the place I have to go to get money to live (which I wouldn't need to do if I was rich) to impose any emotional/moral obligation like a family. If a job starts treating me badly it's great to able to get another job without dealing with the ethical "is it right to abandon your family" type questions.
> Money did not exist before it was invented.
Inventions are children of necessity.
Money (of some kind) can only not exist if a static group of people are in a perfectly static environment where all their economic needs are met.
When the environment is only a little dynamic, historically enforcement of a "static environment" has been attempted with rigid social rules and hierarchies, but things like the plague, droughts, floods, and natural disasters don't listen to them.
When environments are dynamic and experience changes--drastic or gradual--different skills and tools will be needed to adapt. Markets will pop up. A human-independent store of value among peers in a large enough group of people will always be necessary.
A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village. We dont want ephemeral families, we dont want ephemeral communities.
What we have is not working (pun). The overall drift of the last decades has led to an ephemeral society, made us unhappy, insecure, unstable. We need to go back to more grounded forms.