profit

Related: debt, for profit, interest, rent, usury

Profit = Price - Cost

Profit is the difference between the price a consumer finally pays and the costs the owners already paid.

Profit increases as the customer's bargaining position decreases.

The shareholders of a for profit business expect a 'dividend'.

Surplus product is not the same as Profit.

Profit occurs only if the surplus product is sold for price above cost.

== Profit vs Wages
When property has multiple owners, profit separates from wages in a more clear manner because owners that do not work there will not want to pay wages higher than market price.

But when property has only a few owners, they might all be employees and claim all incoming payments as wages.

A solitary owner can hire as many workers as he likes and then just claim all profit as his own wage.

==Profit == 1/Property
Profit is traditionally treated as a reward for the owners of INPUTS of that production.

These owners do not consume the OUTPUTS because they own more INPUTS than they need.

This creates a positive feedback loop that is part of how the system concetrates wealth.

Profit actually measures the consumer's lack of ownership in the Means of Production.

Treating some amount fo Profit as the payer's investment causes those consumers to gain property ownership and eventually also avoid paying profit.

==Artificial Scarcity

Some claim the crisis of capitalism is the falling rate of profit.

But the real crisis is our misunderstanding the origin and purpose of profit.

Profit measures the consumer's lack of ownership in the Means of Production.

The proof is found in the special case where property is owned for product.

When owners of INPUTS areconsumers of OUTPUTS, there is no sale and no profit.

Scarcity increases profit, so those who seek profit must finally seek scarcity.

"'There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates--died of malnutrition--because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.'" -- The Grapes of Wrath