A theoretical relationship exists between a company’s size and how much they care about their customers’ health.

At a very small size, there are few enough customers that if there are detrimental health effects of your product, your business may quickly tank the little foothold it has.

At a a medium to large size, health of your customers becomes a variable to control, in terms of both liability and product deterrence.

(There exists an actuarial table somewhere showing just how unhealthy a given hamburger can be without cutting into profits, and the standard deviations therein.)

Only when a company becomes a monopoly do they again care about the health of their customers, and this time it’s because they ostensibly want to maximize their lifetime customer value. Assuming they have optimized the rest, they are interested in keeping customers alive as long as possible.

By the same token, these same monopolies (in an economic vacuum, of course) would oppose policies that might reduce the global population, as their market is primarily defined by the boundaries of human existence. Similarly, they would likely support legislation pushing for cash to be put in the hands of younger and older people, so that the time period the customers are able to spend expands on either end.

(It just so happens that the majority of businesses you consume from unfortunately fit in the medium-to-large size.)

The Health Conscious Monopoly


It is impossible and perhaps not useful to avoid selection bias.

Selection bias is everything


Getting the first step right seems to be the most important, yet iteration and adjustment can make every step carry similar value and flex. However, when retrospectively evaluating, it’s difficult to re-evaluate a narrative. Narratives are cohesive, while life and development is iterative and unpredictable. Much of the organizational strife between product and engineering is that narratives tend to sell better than big balls of uncertainty, and yet the engineers are responsible for taking the narrative and forging through the uncertainty to carve out the narrative.

Narrative vs Iteration


Monday night football - in order to be at the game, you’re one of two people: either you are local and this is what you do on Mondays, or you traveled to be there, meaning you have both the disposable income to travel and put it into a ticket, AND you have a job where you don’t have to work on a Monday. The result? A bunch of locals and white collar workers in face paint screaming together, and the blue collar class watching them from home or the break room at work. I wonder if the beer costs more in the stadium on a Monday night, and if the commercials cost less to buy than on a Sunday.

Monday Night Football




A non-zero amount of back pressure is applied to certain consumer market goods because the otherwise would-be buyers because of some fear of that thing being found once they have died without having had a chance to dispose of the thing. Which also suggests there is some market for people who would “clean up” on condition of your death or incapacitation. Not like estate planning - more like embarrassment insurance.---
title: Embarrassment Insurance

Jonathan Cutrell

Notes

The Health Conscious Monopoly

Selection bias is everything

Narrative vs Iteration

Monday Night Football

Embarrassment Insurance