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- inactive, on 01/02/2009, -0/+24Craigslist is still incredibly profitable: between $5-$10 million in annual revenues with only 15 employees. That's huge.
Why go public when you can pay yourself a cool several million a year?
http://www.cio.com/archive/020105/tl_online.html - anitab83, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21Thank goodness craigslist has remained private. If they went public, all of a suddent we'd have a half-baked amalgam of Amazon, Myspace, Rent.com, and Monster that would just stink. People use craigslist because it's free and/or ridiculously reasonable. I think as a public company it would quickly become sharkbait to other free competitors.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Financial betterment does not have to be mutually exclusive with societal betterment -- look at Costco, which is a decent company that treats its employees well with loyal customers, versus Walmart, a company that treats its customers and employees like a used diaper.
- neoform, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12the business men and marketers are flipping out because they see so much potential proffit THEY could be making, but in reality, they have nothing to offer themselves.. they just want a cut on work they didn't provide.
- michaelb1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Craigslist is awesome.
I have bought so much good stuff of there for cheap.
Much of my furniture comes from Craigslist.
90% of the furniture I bought, I picked it up at some rich persons McMansion.
Its all high quality, in good shape and severely discounted.
I've sold tons of stuff on there also.
I'm up to $500 worth in the past couple of months. Well on my way to get funds for my new entertainment system,
This entire post is almost totally irrelevant to the story. - uttles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8look at caseyho's post below you. Who's the greedy pig again?
Personally, I say neither. Then again I'm a capitalist pig myself. - CurtHowland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Exactly. Going public also will lose him his company.
Then there's the cost of Sarbanes Okley (sp?) reporting requirements for public companies, the cost of maintaining investor relations, the very real threat at any time of someone getting upity and buying the company out from under him, having to satisfy a board of directors that he didn't hire, etc etc etc.
Reality is, he _IS_ "maximizing investor value", because he and his employees are the investors. Just because they invest their time and talents, rather than just cash, doesn't make any difference.
What really pisses me off about the knee-jerk anti-capitalist mentality is that capitalism is very simply the private ownership of the means of production. How he chooses to maximize his profits, whether he measures it with dollars or customers, is really his choice.
And the fact that it is _HIS_ choice is what makes it capitalism. - CurtHowland, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Capitalism works just fine. He is deciding what to do with his own property. That's capitalism.
The financiers are just displaying envy. Are financiers somehow more than human? Hardly. They see how they could get a quick buck if someone else played their game. They grumble because someone else doesn't want to play.
That grumbling has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with averace. - LowRentDiggs, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Capitalism does not always win. Look no further than Walmart's success for the counter to your claim.
- hoppdawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Aside from clearing a few million a year, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he could sell his company for many more millions and people admire him for it. His profit is that admiration. Yes, it is capitalism.
- loggia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Craig Newmark is one of the few people on Earth that I respect. He likes to help people. He's successful and see no need for grotesque and excessive wealth. This in a society where the media goes "yay!" everytime Goldman Sachs crunches more markets and makes money for the sake of making money, where money is the end of the means and apparently the only point of your work and education. On the other hand, the media finds Craig baffling - why would he not simply not want the bazillion dollars?
As the Cree Indians said, "“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will you realize you cannot eat money.” - uttles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Great point.
- CurtHowland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The same capitalism that drives Linux and other F/OSS developers.
Private ownership of the means of production, used as the owners see fit. They trade their labor for renown, which anyone who has read the classics will know is far more valuable than gold. Beowulf's name is still known, he would consider himself more wealthy than any king if told that in 1500 years people would still be referring to him and his deeds.
This is the same capitalism that is well outlined in _The Cathedral and the Bazaar_. - CurtHowland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you're looking for the answer as to why people are complaining, look no further than this:
http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/anticap.asp
"It is quite customary to liken the entrepreneurs and capitalists of the market economy to the aristocrats of a status society. The basis of the comparison is the relative riches of both groups as against the relatively straitened conditions of the rest of their fellowmen. However, in resorting to this simile, one fails to realize the fundamental difference between aristocratic riches and “bourgeois” or capitalistic riches."
&etc. Great reading. - CurtHowland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Most people hate to think.
- Narrator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Anyone familiar with the "subjective valuation" ideas of Von Mises and others knows that "profit maximization" is an incorrect idea. People arrange their values on a constantly changing scale choosing among alternative intermediate and ultimate aims based on the options available to them, not merely "money" values. My desire to see "Apocalypto" is not 25% higher than my desire to see "Borat". I prefer one to the other, at a given time and that order may change at any particular time. Similarly Craig Newmark prefers the satisfaction of making craigslist what it is over the additional wealth that would come from further commercialization. Another example being that right now I prefer gold to an extra glass of water but that would not be the case if I were in the desert dying of thirst.
- sublimethinker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I don't see how this shows the exclusivity of capitalism and societal betterment. If anything, it validates the idea that the two go hand in hand. Consumers want a site that is more catered to serving them, and that is what craigslist provides. Craigslist still makes lots of money, and customers are happier because the site is better than others. Where is the contradiction here?
- bryanedds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3To the economic ignorance demonstrated in this article, I reply that Craig's actions ARE indeed profitable because he valued the action enough to take it. The reality is that anything can be profit, not just money.
For an example, consider the "profit of charity"
Charity is profitable to all those who donate. Charity is in the self-interest of all those who donate. Otherwise, why would they donate?
It seems counterintuitive, but it is simple truth as I shall explain.
Profit is not just about gaining material goods. In fact, profit has nothing to do with gaining material goods, but is merely a partial correlative! Consider what really happens when someone gets something they want. When someone receives something they want, be it a good, service, or the oppurtunity to act charitably, they incur what Austrians knows as a "psychic profit". All gains an individual makes, material or not, must be ultimately be seen as gain from their intellectual perspective in order to be considered a true profit. So it stands to reason that anything a person values, not just material things, could incur this psychic profit. People donate to chairty when they psychically profit from doing so. When an individual's value of giving is greater than that individual's value of what he is giving away, he literally profits when he does charity. Therefore charity is not only probable, but increasingly inevitable as people lose less money from taxes considering the law of marginal utility.
It is not usually helpful to consider the material gain alone. That intuitively causes people to exclude gains one makes by giving. What is more important is to consider the _psychic profit motive_. All the gains that people can make by receiving, keeping AND giving.
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap15sec8.asp
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap7sec1.asp - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3They are just mad that he will not let them in on it!
- h3smith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Jesus christ NO.
Profit is whatever you as a seller/buyer get out of the transaction that makes you happy with the exchange. Profit is not restricted to dollars and cents. If we exchange goods, as long as we are both happy at the end of the transaction then it was a success.
People who write OSS profit in the pleasure they get from coding. It is doing with your labor what you see fit.
Profit != money. I profit in my business by making money, but I profit more personally when someone writes me and tells me my software kicks ass. That means more to me than the money in the bank. - CurtHowland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Envy.
There is a really good reason that "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbors Stuff" is one of the Ten Commandments.
I linked to Mises' _The Anti-Capitalist Mentality_ above in response to a question like, "Why would anyone think he was wrong?"
Envy.
Google and CraigsList are both simple interfaces. They both seem to be something that any half-assed programmer could have put up in an afternoon. This gives the shallow individual the impression that the only reason they don't make all that money is just luck. The fact that they are so successful feeds great envy in those who would rather tax others for their sustenance than to earn it themselves.
The simple answers often work best. I've been using CraigsList for years, since I was living in the SF Bay area when they started. I'm very happy the list of cities/states has expanded so much, since I'm still somewhere served by their service. Even the next place I want to go is already served, and I'm keeping my eyes on the job listings there in case a miracle happens. - lustre, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5smartass007, I trust you are living in a non-capitalist society somewhere and are not deriving any benefit from the corporations or captialism you so decry.
- nihilator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4It's not about being a private or public company. It's about focusing on the social aspect, and not the money. There are plenty of privately held companies that are overly greedy.
- bryanedds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is a misleading quote for two reasons -
Yes, you can eat money. Not all money, but some. If you actually know what money is, you will realize it is any good in soceity that is generally valued and used in indirect exchange for other goods. Many edible things like berries and tea leaves have been used in the past for just this purpose.
What is money? - http://mises.org:88/Fed
Also, in a free market, the more scarce things are, including the trees and rivers, the more valuable they are and the better protected they are so long as government doesn't get in the way by regulating them or outright confiscating them as it is wont to do. - ynggrsshppr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I'd hate to think how many fat cats would get in on the IPO, make a fortune, and fip the shares leaving the rest of us with nothing.
- xjeffx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Thank you for the most obscure summary ever.
- 15charmaxwtf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Do they owe anyone anything? No.
- 15charmaxwtf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Excellent point. Everyone profits because otherwise they wouldn't have made the exchange.
- yllabianbitpipe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm really glad Craigslist is staying sane and not selling out. Since moving to the bay area almost 7 years ago, I've used it to get all my jobs, find all my apartments, sell stuff, buy stuff, find room-maets. It's awesome. It's also not covered with big annoying ads. Keep it real and I'll keep using it.
- migurski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The key is that they'd make a *quick* buck on CL. It works because of the goodwill built up between the site and its users - people feel that CL is on their side, helping them out, which would end soon after one of these money guys pounded the site with ads.
CraigsList knows they can ensure the longevity of the site by not pissing in their own well - something other social media sites could stand to learn. - darnfabulous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Craigslist is so simple and hasn't even changed appearance-wise during the course of its life. Anymore money would probably be overkill, let alone having an IPO exposing the website to an idiotic board, money-hungry investors, and the rest of the money-first-people-second companies. 2 quotes come to mind: "If it ain't broke don't fix it" and "for the people by the people."
- barnicropolis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What is economically interesting about this story is that the market for capital in this industry does not preclude firms who are not profit maximizers from doing business. If a car company wanted to make cars without "maximizing profits" it would go out of business. The capital used to make cars is priced as a function of the income it can produce. Apparantley, that is not true for the capital used in this industry.
- DeeB, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2+ Digg for F.S.M. reference.
- kindpastor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0*YAWN* I forget how old the ideas of "non-profit=better" are, almost as old as Jesus I believe, if not older. Here's and idea--make a public, for-profit version of craigslist and then decide what people prefer.
- tmesis, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0That was, like, really profound.
- uttles, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3Yep, and people are flocking to Costco for that very reason. Capitalism always wins.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+5corporate capitalist pigs smell money wherever the crowds are gathered...that's the only reason craigslist is on their radar and why murdoch bought myspace and google (yes, digg me down google bitches) bought youtube.
i hope to the fsm that craig keeps all these scumbags locked out! - dimitrisokolov, on 10/12/2007, -11/+0
Craig's not that bright. - HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1dupe alert!
http://digg.com/business_finance/Craigslist_Says_No_to_the_Capitalists
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