Profit motive

“ Profit, another form of interest, is an expensive process of your money system. The Romans had a saying, Caveat Emptor, 'Let the buyer beware.' History shows that your industrial, and commercial business, and services have always been based on hard bargaining. The desire for more money gain was and is so deeply impregnated in you that it has blunted and broken down your ethical standards. You have always tried to get the most gain for the least value. ”

“ The whole impression of this picture is one of industry, prosperity, thrift, and—by reason of these three—happiness.
The nature of profits. Profits.—The return received by the organizers and managers of productive enterprises is commonly known as profit. The amount of their profit depends upon the degree of success with which they can produce goods for less than the selling price. Every employer or organizer assumes a considerable amount of risk. He obligates himself to pay definite amounts for the use of capital, materials, and labor no matter what the value of the finished products. ”

“ Industry is, in itself and when properly chosen, delightful and profitable to the worker; and when your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one. ”

“ This, by like reason, will encourage and edge industrious and profitable improvements, because many will rather venture in that kind, than take five in the hundred, especially having been used to greater profit. ”

“ These he exhorted to set their thoughts on what was their own, on their own advantage or profit—of course interpreting profit in a philosophic sense as being virtue, which is its own reward and is the most profitable thing for every man. ”

“ Alas! in all this confusion, only those keen-eyed children of this world find their profit; their idea does not readily forsake them. In their substantial theory of life, the business of man in it is to get on, to thrive, to prosper, to have riches in possession. They will have their little ones taught, by the law of demand, what will fetch its price in the market ”

“ True enterprise is constantly on the alert to discover some new want of society, some fertile source of profit or honor, some unexplored field of business, and is ready to supply the one or to take advantage of the other. ”

“ The full measure of profit is its aim; and having the substance of its desire, it shows a utilitarian scorn of the mummeries and ceremonials by which the overlordship of other days was formally acknowledged. ”

“ On one side of you stand the contributors to the vast treasure of knowledge that mankind has accumulated, and is accumulating—men who have, in general, labored without fee or reward; on the other side of you stand the owners of this vast treasure, desirous to have it fashioned in a manner to suit their various tastes and powers, that all may be enabled to profit by its possession. Between them stand yourselves, middlemen between the producers and the consumers. ”

“ Returning to the question of interest on actual capital,—i.e., the excess of value produced over the cost of production,—the question as to what determines the value of a product leads to the assertion that capital-profit must be due to an advantage which the producer possesses over the marginal producer. ”

“ The fact is, that the profit system on which all Modern Capitalism rests is radically and fundamentally vicious and wrong. Men work and strive, not to produce for use, for service, but for profit. Profit becomes the aim of human endeavor—nothing higher or better—Competition. ”

“ In commerce, each aims at the satisfaction of his own wants, but can gain his own profit only by furnishing some commodity or service to another. Thus in aiming at the increase of his own private pleasurable states of consciousness, he contributes to the consciousness of others. ”

“ Before there can be any development of business there must be promise of a profit. If the business is more risky than the average there must be promise of a profit higher than the average. Take away this incentive and business stagnates. ”

“ Why should there be any profits at all, I should like to know. And if profits there must be, well then, the profit grabber isn’t going to get ten times as much as the wage-earner, just because he had a few screwing forefathers. ”

“ The profit of their places is all their aim; to make the best hand they can of them, right or wrong. They love gifts, and follow after reward; they set their hearts upon their salary, the fees and perquisites of their offices, and are greedy of them, and never think they can get enough ”

“ Speculation for economic theory is a purely commercial phenomenon, a hazarding of capital on the supposition that desires will be found ready and waiting for the commodity produced—with a sufficient offering of purchasing power to afford a profit. ”

“ The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle. “My business is sacred,” says the business man in his heart. “Whatever prospers my business, is good; it must be. Whatever hinders it, is wrong ”

“ The Morality of Trading in the Strict Sense.— (a) In itself, trading has the appearance of evil, inasmuch as money-making may be an encouragement to avarice. But in reality profit as an end is morally indifferent, neither good nor bad, and all will depend on the ultimate reason for which one engages in business. ”

“ Now you can see where the profit comes in. Supposing these men turn out a couple of thousand sovereigns a day—no very difficult matter with a plant like theirs; and, of course, the money can be disposed of with the greatest possible ease. ”

“ At present you must note that all the amazing machinery which we have invented has served only to increase the amount of profit-bearing wares; in other words, to increase the amount of profit pouched by individuals for their own advantage, part of which profit they use as capital for the production of more profit, with ever the same waste attached to it ”

“ What do we say, in fact?
To determine value,—in other words, to organize within itself the production and distribution of wealth,—society proceeds exactly as the mind does in the generation of concepts. ”

“ We proceed, then, to consider the practical relations of Profit and Wages, as they exist amongst us. Unquestionably the only solid foundation for these relations must be equal justice; without which there can be neither permanent prosperity nor increasing intelligence. ”

“ First and principally, it requires that the directing mind should be incessantly occupied with the subject; should be continually laying schemes by which greater profit may be obtained, or expense saved. This intensity of interest in the subject it is seldom to be expected that any one should feel, who is conducting a business as the hired servant and for the profit of another. There are experiments in human affairs which are conclusive on the point. ”

“ But to commerce everything must give way; profit and profit are the only speculations--"double--double, toil and trouble." I have seldom entered a shady walk without being soon obliged to turn aside to make room for the rope-makers ”

“ By his knowledge of the right times and best modes of purchasing, by his enterprise and sagacity in maintaining intercourse with and between distant markets, and by his outlay of capital and skill as a carrier of commodities from the place of their production to the place where they are needed for use, he cheapens the goods that pass through his hands by a greater amount than the toll he levies upon them, which—however large—is his rightful due. ”

“ Here we reach in the minds and motives of a large class of men an ultimate Demand for laborers, and specially for skilled laborers, which is as true and constant to its legitimate end of Profit as the needle is true and constant to the pole. ”

“ Then what you say comes to this: that upon your hosiery goods you make no profit at all?-Not when they are once sold; that is to say, when they are once bought, the profit lies in the profit we have upon the goods. That is the only profit we have in the matter. ”

“ I will juggle into my own hands all the instruments for the production of wealth that I can lay hold of; and I will use them for myself against the producer and the consumer. I will enrich myself by 'corners' on the necessaries of life ”

“ There are Economic Values ruling in the market place, directing industry in its changing from one sort of production to another, bringing prosperity to one individual and bankruptcy to another, not with the caprice of an individual will, but with the remorseless impersonality of wind and tide. He who conforms to them, who anticipates their mutations, gains great wealth—but no business man dare set his personal values against them. ”

“ It will come out in greater fulness and force when, having taken into consideration the theory of Value and Price, we shall be enabled to exhibit the law of profits in the concrete—in the complex entanglement of circumstances in which it actually works. ”

“ It is for the service of all, though it may be under the direction of one.
Profits belong in three places: they belong to the business—to keep it steady, progressive, and sound. They belong to the men who helped produce them. And they belong also, in part, to the public. ”

“ Whether it's the high wage paid by the Company, the big profits of the business man or the heavier crop of the rancher, it amounts to the same. And yet you would insist that they must not be governed by this desire for gain. So far as I can see, it is this same desire for gain that has driven men into doing every really great thing that has ever been done. Look carefully into every great enterprise that is of value to the world and you will find at the beginning of it someone reaching for a dollar or its equivalent. ”

“ He may not wish to consume what he himself produces, but his motive for producing and selling is the desire to buy. Therefore, if the producers generally produce and sell more and more, they certainly also buy more and more. ”

“ The economic interest, our desire and esteem for solid and matter-of-fact things like market commodities and standardized market services, has been conceived as nothing visionary and speculative, as no peering into the infinite or outreaching of an inexpressible discontent, but an intelligent, clear-eyed grasping and holding of known satisfactions for measured and acknowledged desires. ”

“ The economic interest, as a function of intelligence, finds its proper expression in a valuation set upon one thing in terms of another—a valuation that is either a step in a settled plan of spending and consumption or marks the passing of an old plan and our embarkation on a new. From such a view it must follow that the economic betterment of an individual or a society can consist neither in the accumulation of material wealth alone nor in a more diversified technical knowledge and skill. ”

“ Of the net profits of persons in business, a part, as before observed, may be considered as interest on capital, and of a perpetual character, and the remaining part as remuneration for the skill and labour of superintendence. ”

“ Meanwhile you, a wealthy merchant, are daily rolling up an enormous fortune by doing business upon the same principle which you condemn in the wheelwright, and nobody finds fault. At every scarcity in the market you immediately raise the price of every article you hold. It is your business to take advantage of the necessities of those with whom you deal, by selling [138] to them according to the value to them, and not according to the cost to you. ”

“ For exercising the whole of this power he finds a sufficient motive only under peculiar circumstances; but he always possesses it; and the portion of it which he at any time does exercise, is the measure of the effect which he produces on price. ”

“ Therefore, to control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. ”

“ Vigor, genius, diligence, and all the personal advantages which result therefrom, are the work of Nature and, to a certain extent, of the individual; society awards them the esteem which they merit: but the wages which it pays them is measured, not by their power, but by their production. Now, the product of each is limited by the right of all. ”

“ In like manner, though by his skill and energy a man may convert his business into a flowing Pactolus, ever depositing its golden sands in his coffers, yet, through the numerous wants of unfrugal habits, he may live embarrassed and die poor. Economy is the guardian of property, the good genius whose presence guides the footsteps of every prosperous and successful man. ”

“ But above all, to young men who were active on their feet, the trade of agent and factor, and the undertaking of all sorts of commissions and charges for helpless rich men was, they said, a most profitable means of gaining a livelihood. ”