In much of contemporary business culture, "value" has been reduced to little more than shareholder profit. Earnings reports and stock prices dominate headlines, and executives are often incentivized primarily on quarterly returns. Yet when we step back and ask what value actually means—both for individuals and societies—it becomes clear that equating value with money alone is deeply flawed.
Money is not value itself. Money is a tool, a medium of exchange. Its usefulness comes from what it enables—food, shelter, free time, health, connection, and purpose. True value is created when products, services, and systems improve people’s lives in tangible ways. As Tim Ferriss emphasized in The 4-Hour Workweek, wealth should be reframed not as raw financial accumulation but as access to time, freedom, and experiences. Free time, flexibility, and the ability to direct one’s own energy are often more meaningful forms of wealth than an extra digit in a bank account.
This redefinition of value has direct implications for UX, product development, and business practices. A designer or strategist who genuinely prioritizes the user is not just optimizing metrics—they are contributing to human well-being. The tragedy is that many companies publicly claim to prioritize users while structurally privileging shareholders. Social media platforms, for example, frequently design manipulative loops that maximize engagement at the expense of mental health. The algorithm becomes an extractive machine, designed to trap people in cycles of craving, fantasy, and dissatisfaction.
---
The Illusion of Efficiency
A common counterargument is that revenue-driven organizations are, in principle, already aligned with serving people: businesses that fail to deliver good products or services will lose customers, and the best solutions will win. In reality, however, this logic has been undermined again and again. Efficiency has too often come to mean cost-cutting at the expense of quality.
Consider planned obsolescence. My uncle inherited my grandparents’ refrigerator from the 1950s, and it still works today. A modern refrigerator, by contrast, will often struggle to last even ten years. Similarly, many new apartment buildings in Pittsburgh are visibly deteriorating within only a few years of completion. Walking through Oakland, one can already see siding rippling and detaching on “gentrification-type” apartments less than a decade old. By comparison, older buildings—constructed with durable materials and regularly maintained—can last a century or more.
This pattern is not confined to physical goods. In healthcare, private equity firms frequently buy up local clinics, cut staff, reduce quality of care, and extract profits—sometimes to the point of closing vital medical services. In these cases, profit extraction occurs at the direct expense of the very communities the business is supposed to serve.
These are short-term gains achieved by gutting long-term value. The spider that sucks the guts out of its prey may be an apt metaphor: profitable in the immediate sense, but nothing remains for the future.
---
Fossil Fuels as a Model of Extraction
The fossil fuel industry illustrates this extractive logic on a planetary scale. For more than a century, enormous profits have been generated by pulling hydrocarbons from the ground while ignoring externalities such as climate change, poisoned aquifers near fracking sites, and rising rates of respiratory disease. These are not speculative concerns—they are measurable, scientifically validated harms. And yet because the accounting frameworks of business often ignore external costs, extractive models continue to thrive.
The lesson here is stark: monetary profit does not equal value. In fact, when pursued without responsibility, profit can directly destroy the foundations of long-term societal well-being.
---
A Counterexample: The Tata Group
If extractive models demonstrate the failure of equating profit with value, the Tata Group of India provides a striking counterexample of a corporation that has explicitly prioritized long-term, socially grounded value creation. Founded in 1868, Tata has grown into India’s largest conglomerate, spanning steel, automobiles, information technology, hospitality, and more. Unlike many corporations primarily driven by shareholder pressure, Tata’s structure and ethos have embedded social responsibility into its DNA.
Around two-thirds of Tata Sons, the holding company that controls the group, is owned by charitable trusts. These trusts fund hospitals, educational institutions, and rural development programs across India. This means that profits generated by Tata companies are not simply extracted into private hands—they are reinvested into the fabric of society. For example, Tata has historically played a leading role in building India’s industrial capacity while simultaneously funding public goods such as the Indian Institute of Science.
The Tata Group’s longevity—over 150 years—underscores the sustainability of this approach. By aligning profit with community value, it has maintained legitimacy, resilience, and broad trust in ways that extractive firms often cannot. While no corporation is without flaws or controversies, Tata exemplifies an alternative trajectory: a model where business success is tied to human development, not exploitation.
---
An American Example: REI
A similar, though smaller-scale, example exists in the United States with Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI). Founded in 1938, REI operates not as a conventional corporation but as a consumer cooperative. Its customers are also its members, and profits are reinvested into dividends for members, employee well-being, and outdoor conservation initiatives. REI is widely recognized for progressive labor practices, commitments to sustainability, and refusal to maximize profit at the expense of its values. For example, the company famously closes all its stores on Black Friday, encouraging employees and customers alike to spend the day outdoors rather than shopping.
REI demonstrates that even within the American retail landscape, alternatives to shareholder primacy are possible—and can thrive. Its durability and reputation show how aligning business with values beyond pure profit can create loyalty, trust, and genuine community value.
---
A Counterexample to REI: Walmart
If REI provides a model of socially positive value creation, Walmart illustrates the opposite. Walmart is, without question, one of the most successful corporations in history. It has demonstrated extraordinary longevity and global reach. Yet its business model has been devastating for countless local communities—particularly in rural America.
Walmart often enters towns with lower prices and larger inventories than local businesses can match. Over time, this dominance wipes out local retailers, siphoning profits and revenues away from communities into the coffers of the Walton family and the corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. What is lost is not just economic activity but also the social value of locally owned businesses, which historically reinvest in and sustain their own towns.
On a personal level, I once worked at a Walmart during college for about a year. Never before had I felt so clearly that a company did not care whether I lived or died. Employees were treated as disposable, overworked, and underpaid, with little sense of dignity or value in their labor. My experience mirrors countless accounts of Walmart’s labor practices, where short-term cost-cutting and profit extraction come directly at the expense of human well-being.
In short, Walmart is proof that profitability and even durability do not equate to positive value for society. It thrives financially while hollowing out local economies and devaluing its workers.
---
Toward a Rebalancing
The takeaway is not that profit is irrelevant, but that it must be reframed. Profit is a means, not an end. Sustainable value comes from balancing efficiency with durability, growth with responsibility, and innovation with care for human beings and their environments.
For those working in UX, product design, or strategy, this reframing is essential. When we prioritize short-term shareholder value, we risk replicating the mistakes of extractive industries—building brittle, manipulative systems that eventually collapse. But when we treat value as a holistic measure—encompassing user well-being, durability, trust, and community impact—we create products and organizations that can endure.
The choice is clear: continue on the extractive path, or embrace models that create genuine value. If business is to remain legitimate in the 21st century, it must learn from both the failures of planned obsolescence, fossil fuels, and Walmart, and the successes of models like the Tata Group and REI.
References
Bhasin, K. (2012, January 17). Planned obsolescence: The dirty little secret of consumer electronics. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/planned-obsolescence-the-dirty-little-secret-of-consumer-electronics-2012-1
Friedman, G. (2022, March 14). Why modern appliances don’t last as long. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/03/why-appliances-break-down-refrigerators-washers/627040/
Gelles, D. (2022, March 12). Private equity is gutting America — and getting away with it. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/business/private-equity.html
Jasanoff, S. (2010). A new climate for society. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), 233–253. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409361497
REI Co-op. (2015, October 27). REI to close on Black Friday, invites nation to #OptOutside. REI Newsroom. https://news.rei.com/releases/rei-to-close-on-black-friday-invites-nation-to-optoutside.htm
Tata Group. (n.d.). About us. Tata.com. https://www.tata.com/about-us
Tim Ferriss. (2007). The 4-hour workweek: Escape 9–5, live anywhere, and join the new rich. Crown Publishing Group.
Walmart. (2023). Our business. Corporate.walmart.com. https://corporate.walmart.com/our-business
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.
Copyright © 2025 Ryan Badertscher. All rights reserved.