profit

Related: cost, price, surplus, usury

Profit = Price - Cost

Profit means "to progress" in Latin, but that would require it be treated as an investment from the user that pays it.

Profit measures the Payer's lack of Source Ownership.

Treating Profit as that Payer's investment is a negative feedback loop that allows sufficient growth (as much as the Payer is willing to Work) while inhibiting the overaccumulation caused by the rich getting richer.

Profit is "price above cost".  It is the pressure that causes consumers to pay more for berries than it cost the owners to produce them.

Profit requires real or artificial rivalry/scarcity.

Profit is the portion of Price, Rent, Tax or Interest that goes beyond real costs.  That profit becomes usury unless it is treated as an investment from the consumer who paid it.

Profit is an inverse measure of competition and a direct measure of monopoly.

Profit should be interpreted as a plea for development because it measures consumer dependence.  Usury gained against consumers disrespects their natural desire to grow, so hampers true progress.

Worker wages are a valid cost of production, but workers are consumers too, and taking advantage of consumer vulnerability steps on the undeveloped.

Capitalist owners compete against other owners to keep consumer price above production costs, but non-owning workers cannot compete directly because they do not have access to the sources of production.

While workers might "unite" as Marx suggested to buy some sources (say a plant), they would also soon be usurists if they did not treat profit as consumer investment.

Object consumers who own the sources of those objects may hire workers, but profit is undefined since source owners also own the objects of production even before they are created.

Why do we pay Exxon so much Profit?  Why don't we, the Consumers, just OWN the oil rigs ourselves and pay the Workers the same as they currently receive? It would save us *so much* money.

Physical sources such as land, plants, tools, buildings, etc. are held artificially scarce by (often ignorant, so somewhat blameless) profiteers.

If the qualified workers could access these sources "at cost", we could build any car we (the consumers) could dream up.  If consumers owned the physical sources, they would be in control, and could finally truely demand the most advanced of designs for game consoles, media players, video cards, clothing, food, etc. even when those solutions "ruin the market" for usurists.  Without the usual artificial scarcity and externalization required to hold usury in place, the consuming owners would allow every artisan to compete directly against every other artisan to quickly outperform the dinosaurs of proprietary Capitalism - where only owners compete with other owners while consumers and workers have little say.

An unfortunate misunderstanding by a prominent economist:
"'
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system", I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are --- or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously -preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.'" -- Milton Friedman in "Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance" Chapter entitled "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits" SpringerLink.com/content/m2141pp14981487h

Yes, 'utilization' is a massive problem for us now.

Sharing the Costs of Production

Utilize space and tools by scheduling access

real costs
and cover the real costs of initial
purchase and upkeep for the Means of Production that
a group of people need, then we can escape the usual
problem of absentee-landlords controlling our decisions,
and also avoid paying profit.

We Ownership   is based on
who need the outputs are the
people that need the results of those
tools (the consumers) are the very same people that
*co-own* the tools, then they must still pay all the costs
of that ownership as usual, but they would not pay more
than costs (they do not pay profit), for who would they
pay that extra value to?

This maximizes competition between workers, allowing
the consumer-owners to choose any qualified artisan to
operate or maintain that machine.

But, if the people those tools are the people that happen
to know how to operate and maintain those tools, (the
workers) then those worker-owners will not allow outside
workers to compete against them (they would not rent
the machines to those outsiders for the real costs of
operation), and yet they would only pay the real costs
of operation when using the machines themselves - and
so they would artificially prop-up wages, becoming small-
time capitalists and collecting profit as inflated wages.

And so it seems to me the most efficient form for co-
ownership is one where the end-users of the product
(the consumers) are the co-owners of the Means of
Production even when they have no idea how to operate
or maintain those tools.

For example, imagine a neighborhood of people that
occasionally need holes drilled with a power-drill, but
none of them knows how to operate such a machine.

If they do not co-own a power drill, then there are two
typical scenarios that will occur when any one of them
needs to have a hole drilled:

1.) They will contact an independent worker-owner to
bring his own power-drill to do the work for some amount
of compensation (let's say $10 for 10 minutes of work).

This worker-owner must cover all of his costs, and he
must pay himself a wage.

It is difficult to know if he is also collecting profit unless
we bring a competitor on the scene as described next.

2.) The will contact a business which is owned by a
typical capitalist who hires all the workers to do the
same job as described in #1.

This capitalist will probably charge approximately the
same amount per hole, and must cover all the costs
of that production (initial purchase of the drill, wear and
tear on the machine, etc.) and wages, just the same
as in #1.

But if doesn't have any money left-over after paying all
of those costs, then, by definition, he does not have
any profit.

And so, he will probably pay the worker less that what
the worker in #1 received.

If so, then we have proved the #1 paid himself the wage
that workers will accept for that job and *also* paid
himself some profit.

This means worker #2 works for less compensation than
#1 does, and yet, #1 does not have access to a drill that
is needed for that work...

And so we see, if the drill (the Means of Production) is/are
co-owned by those that need the goods of services that
are achieved by those tools, then competition between
workers is maximized (the consumers can hire whoever
has those skills), and so profit is eliminated.