The profits of capitalists are not the surpluses extorted from labor, but are the result of the proper use of one’s capital, as losses are the result of the improper use of capital.
Tag Archives | profit
Don’t laborers have a right to a share of the capitalist’s profits, in addition to their wages?
Why are the laborers who demand a share in the capitalist’s profits, silent in demanding their “share” when he incurs losses? Why don’t they cry out and demand that they get to receive a share in those losses? If labor is the sole cause of all profit, then is it not also the sole cause of all losses? A moments reflection will point out that laborers are only responsible for their job description — they are not directly responsible for the losses of a business — and that the cause of an enterprise’s losses lies essentially with the owner, as do the profits.
That a businessmen pays a worker less wages than the worker feels he deserves is not exploitation, as the worker is free to leave his job and look elsewhere for a higher paying one, if he thinks that someone can give him a better job for a better wage.
Let any worker in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or Communist China try to attempt such a feat as leaving his job without permission of the state, and he will soon find what exploitation really means.
Don’t laborers have a right to a share of the capitalist’s profits, in addition to their wages?
Why are the laborers who demand a share in the capitalist’s profits, silent in demanding their “share” when he incurs losses? Why don’t they cry out and demand that they get to receive a share in those losses? If labor is the sole cause of all profit, then is it not also the sole cause of all losses? A moments reflection will point out that laborers are only responsible for their job description — they are not directly responsible for the losses of a business — and that the cause of an enterprise’s losses lies essentially with the owner, as do the profits.
That a businessmen pays a worker less wages than the worker feels he deserves is not exploitation, as the worker is free to leave his job and look elsewhere for a higher paying one, if he thinks that someone can give him a better job for a better wage. Let any worker in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or Communist China try to attempt such a feat as leaving his job without permission of the state, and he will soon find what exploitation really means.
0 | exploitation, labor, profit
Is there such a thing as an “excessive profit”?
There is no such thing as a profit that is too high or too low. That is, there is no such thing as an “excessive” profit. There is only the profit that men earn.
0 | monopolies, profit
What is profit?
When a man enters any productive endeavor he starts with a given sum of capital (unspent wealth). If after a period of time he is left with more than he started, he has earned a profit. If he is left with less then he started, he has incurred a loss.
Isn’t the profit motive evil?
No. The profit motive is the pursuit of making a profit from one’s production. The opposite is the loss motive — to pursue a loss. Now tell me, which is evil? Obviously not the first, and only the latter. The pursuit of profit is the moral right to pursue ones happiness applied to the ones economic endeavors.
How is a profit made?
Profit is not made by conning others, but by creating something of value that did not exist before.
As wealth is required to support one’s life, the increase in wealth through production and trade — the creation of a profit — adds to one’s life. How can the pursuit of wealth, the support of one’s life, be considered evil? In reason, it cannot.
What is not profit?
Stealing wealth from others, through fraud or force, is not profit, but theft (an initiation of force). Whether that theft is called a mugging, welfare, or “voluntary” taxation [a contradiction in terms], it is still theft and is always evil. Theft, like loss, is destruction; trade, like profit, is creation. To pursue profit is to pursue creation. It is an act of virtue and not a vice.
Your profit is the symbol and reward for the value of your creation, as judged by the mind’s of others who have freely-given given their wealth to you in exchange for it. Do not let the leftist intellectuals who infect our universities persuade you from thinking otherwise. In truth, it is those altruists who condemn the profit motive, who are guilty of evil.
