{"id":1018,"date":"2026-01-26T15:54:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2026-01-28T10:49:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T18:49:34","slug":"profit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=1018","title":{"rendered":"What is “Profit”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my poem “Profit<\/a><\/em>” I defined profit<\/em><\/strong> as “getting more out of an investment than you put into it<\/em>.”\u00a0 This definition elicited some debate.\u00a0 Basically the model transaction that many like to use as an example is one where “you” are producing a tangible product<\/em> that requires raw materials<\/em>, infrastructure<\/em> and labor<\/em>, each of which has a cost<\/em> to you, the initiative-taker.\u00a0 When you sell<\/em> the product, you expect to recover your costs and a little extra for you efforts<\/em>.\u00a0 That last bit is usually what people like to call “profit”, and it seems fair enough.<\/p>\n

However…<\/p>\n

I prefer to include it in the category of labor<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 After all, your business doesn’t run itself.\u00a0 You took the risk, you made the investment in the infrastructure and you spend many hours making it all work.\u00a0 This also seems fair, but should you<\/em> be the sole judge of how much “extra” your work and initiative are worth, relative to (for instance) the hours invested by your employees?<\/p>\n

A significant fraction of all human discourse centers around this issue: whose labor of which kind is worth how much?\u00a0 There will never be a time when all parties are satisfied with a fair deal, but there is one category of “labor” that is particularly unresolved: the “boss” set the price<\/strong><\/em> of the product as high as the market will bear<\/em><\/strong>, equating the resultant difference between itemized costs and gross revenue, divided by the number of hours spent by the boss, as the value of an hour of his or her labor and initiative.\u00a0 This is complex, but I feel that here is where the idea of “profit” makes its transition from a logical, fair scheme to an exercise in selfish opportunism and oppression.<\/p>\n

“What about rewarding initiative and innovation?” shout the capitalists in the room.\u00a0 Well, that’s a fair question too, but there is no negotiation between the consumer and the business, or between the employees and the owner, regarding what level of compensation is “fair”.\u00a0 It’s left completely up the “The Invisible Hand of the Free Market” — i.e.<\/em> whatever the market will bear.<\/p>\n

As a result, those who succeed in this gamble can make obscene amounts of money while their employees scrape by on minimum wage, and those “winners” receive the accolades of an envious society.\u00a0 This, I think, is not a good situation.<\/p>\n

Marx suggested a solution.\u00a0 It’s been tried, and it didn’t work out in the long run.\u00a0 Perhaps it went a bit too far.\u00a0 People do like to improve their own lot, even if they are dedicated to improving everyone’s.<\/p>\n

Perhaps there’s a happy medium?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my poem “Profit” I defined profit as “getting more out of an investment than you put into it.”\u00a0 This definition elicited some debate.\u00a0 Basically the model transaction that many like to use as an example is one where “you” are producing a tangible product that requires raw materials, infrastructureRead More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2020-and-after","category-essays"],"gutentor_comment":4,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}