Built-In Failure
Have you ever wondered why people buy so much medicines? Or why there are always more problems than solutions?
Have you ever wondered why people buy so much medicines? Or why there are always more problems than solutions in every piece of software? The reason to that and many other glitches in our world is the built-in failure.
Think about it. What is the function of medicine manufacturers? To make and sell as much medicines as possible. If their medicines cured customers permanently, they would soon be out of business. They need to make people sick keeping them barely alive to be able to maximise their profits. Therefore it could be customers’ best interest to avoid using medicines. Which other built-in failures do you recognize?
When troubles are good for business
Software companies help their customers by providing solutions to problems. Their business depends on the problems and it thrives on problems—less problems is a problem. So creating solutions that actually increase problems is better for business than solving any of the existing problems. More problems mean more sales and profit. For a customer, the best solution is not to buy any solution at all.
In the society, the police is a good example of a built-in failure. The police is supposed to make a country safer for its citizens and deal with criminals: to protect and serve. What would happen if the police actually took care of them? They would not be needed any more. So, its in their best interest to keep crime levels high for justifying their existence and spread insecurity.
On the personal level, built-in failure happens when you try to do something, or you say, for example, I will try to do my best. To be able to keep trying, you need to fail because if you succeed, you cannot keep trying any more.
Comments
If you take something like "If their medicines cured customers permanently, they would soon be out of business.", the same could be said about schools: "If schools let their customers graduate, they would soon be out of business." Right? This static view ignores that there's a younger class behind them.
This built-in failure idea is too narrow, too binary. Everything rises and falls like the seasons. What makes people sick in summer is not the same what afflicts them in winter.
Do winter coat makers go out of business every summer? They do not need to make people cold to maximise profits. They can act on people's sense of fashion and novelty to get people to buy new things. The medicine companies can also act on people's vanity with expensive medicines like Rogaine or Viagra.
Keeping people sick or any "built-in failure" is an oversimplified way of looking at a complex issue.
The difference with schools is that they are not businesses and thus do not follow business logic like pharmaceutical companies. Schools exist to indoctrinate pupils to sedentary societies.
A business that pretends to do good, even charity or to help people is always a scam or failure. Businesses exist to make as much as possible money and to strive for a monopoly. This applies to coat businesses as well.
What do you think, how would healthier people help pharmaceutical companies to make more money and achieve monopoly?