I think even 50 years ago, that most people started businesses because they had a skill and could use it to help others meet their needs.

HP started (more than 50 years ago) with two friends who wanted to make better electronic test equipment. Profit was not forefront in their mind like it is to an MBA graduate today. Hewlett and Packard wanted to provide quality test equipment to people, because a lot of the test equipment of the day was subpar to them.

By the time the 80s rolled around, they paid 100% of an employee's college education (no matter how high they wanted to go with that) and paid them 75% of their salary while they were away at school. College was cheaper then, but zero employers today would even briefly consider paying people any amount at all to not be at work while also paying for the thing keeping them away from work.

corner stores in crowded neighborhoods are not started to maximize profit potential for shareholders. corner stores are started because someone saw the need for a corner store and wanted to make a living running it; they wanted that to be their job.

Until the invention of the MBA I don't think most people who started businesses did so purely for money. There are many easier ways to make money. Today people can start shitting mobile games with pay to win mechanics and they will be rich when the first one takes off. No one creates mobile games with pay to win mechanics because they want people to experience the joy of microtransactions.

Every business today (certainly every tech business) is designed to find out what people want via market research, pick the thing that looks the most profitable, then through a very well developed process, turn that business into a source of retirement money for the founder(s) and a source of return for the investors. It is literally a photocopy model of business creation. "Follow the process and you will succeed."

No one is opening shops today to help their neighbor. No one is opening new bakeries because their town needs one. No one is doing anything that one used to see people doing everywhere they went. Profit-driven motivation ruins everything it touches. Everything.

Everything is profit driven, now. Everything. The MBA is the most disasterous degree ever devised. It makes people think that starting a business purely to make money is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do, and it simply isn't.

> Zero employers today would even briefly consider paying people any amount at all to not be at work while also paying for the thing keeping them away from work.

Apple definitely had programs to pay all or part of relevant educational programs, and they sometimes paid for people to attend conferences. I'm sure it was much more restrictive than the HP policy you're describing here, but it was definitely more than nothing.

It was still profit-motivated back then, at least in the positive self-interest manner.

The difference is that colleges actually educated students, and students were actually there to learn.

some were, maybe. most weren't. most businesses started symbiotically without profit being the #1 concern at all times. Making enough profit to continue the business is indeed important if you want the business to continue, but as soon as profit becomes your primary goal, you go from being a symbiotic member of society to a parasitic member of society.

Seeking profit above all else is not healthy.

Creating a business used to be done by people who had a skill and wanted to make a living doing it. They wanted their business to be their job. No blacksmiths started a business because they wanted to become rich. They wanted to be blacksmiths, they had pride in their work, and they wanted to have money to live as well.