@admitsWrongIfProven profit by itself isn't a bad thing. If I sacrifice my property or effort to produce a good or service, I should be able to set a price for that service that turns that work into something productive for me. If I go out into the woods with an empty basket, I can fill it up with berries (profit - more than I started with). If I don't need all of the berries I should be able to use those berries to trade for something I do need from someone who doesn't have berries. Using a currency just lets me trade with people who don't need berries either. But when you can just create new currency from thin air, it really distorts the concept of profit in really weird ways. If I sell my basket of berries for 5 dollars, but then the supply of dollars is increased by 20 percent, I have effectively lost a dollar. Sure I still made 4 dollars profit on my time, but if I still want to maintain the same buying power for my time, I have to increase the price of the berries I've picked. You can say "well you don't own the forest", but I do own my time, and there is no requirement for me to go pick berries, but a lot of people enjoy the berries who might otherwise not go pick them.
@admitsWrongIfProven I don't disagree. The way our economy is currently constructed is an absolute freak show, but the solution isn't more centralization and more regulations drafted by "experts" of industry. It's far far less central authority over how people conduct business.
@thatguyoverthere Yeah, "industry" being a key word. Make profit the benchmark, people will forego delivering the service that was thought to be rendered for the money if they can. And the centralization helps with entrenching this.
@thatguyoverthere Eh, they are lackeys of the actual rich. Kind of separating the eggs between yolk and egg white, aristocracy is gone but it's still all there.
@admitsWrongIfProven my point is simply that profit isn't inherently bad. It's really the main motivation for doing things, especially for others. Also "taking from nature" is taking from yourself (we aren't excluded from nature despite our attempts to pretend). It's the sacrifice of time that could have been spent on other work necessary for your survival. You are saving someone else time, or at least they feel that way. Is it possible to con and game people and extract more profit? Sure, but unless you control the whole market your shenanigans can only take you so far before people are wise to your actions. I agree the service needs to be in focus, but no one is doing any extra work for anyone without being incentivized either with profit or force
@thatguyoverthere Oh, but if you harvest berries, you take what was already there in nature. This is a benign example, of course we should take reasonable amounts of stuff from nature, otherwise we can only starve. Your mention of fiat money is a valid point, but what i was trying to say is that the view is important too: focus on the profit, you will get bad results, even without fiat money. Like in the berry example, if you loose sight of the use of berries, you might deliver mushed or spoiled berries. If the recipient does not have an alternative (like price-gouging, i think companies do quality-gouging: if everyone delivers subpar stuff, people cannot just go to the competition), they'll have to deal with it. So the actual service needs to be in focus, not the profit.
@admitsWrongIfProven also yes you can take too much from nature, but I think that we are more prone to do that when we are working within a centralized system. Water from Midwest states is redirected to California so they can grow almonds in a drought. Those almonds are shipped all over the place, but it comes at a cost of highly publicized forest fires and droughts in surrounding areas every year. The solution? Drive electric cars (ignoring the fire risk that entails) and replace animal proteins with bug and plant proteins (which will likely be manufactured/harvested in California).
@thatguyoverthere Well, in moderation, profit is not bad. Only when it becomes the main focus. I think in this way, we can agree.
Not the main focus: profit means taking care of yourself insofar that you don't just give everything away (everything = the value you created by investing your time) on some hope of reciprocation. It means setting boundaries with others.
Main focus: the value produced will suffer, since actual value (and what good it does for others) cannot be in focus if profit is exclusively.
@admitsWrongIfProven I agree, but I'm not sure defining excess is particularly easy or something that can be agreed upon by everyone. Some people might choose to sacrifice more than others, and that sacrifice may not be apparent to everyone. The reasons a person might do that are many, and judging intent is nearly impossible.
@admitsWrongIfProven I honestly don't think you need to formalize the extremes so long as you don't allow for centralized redistribution of resources. Those extreme cases are formed when companies and government collude to prevent competition and stifle innovation.
@thatguyoverthere I agree that it is a hard problem. Not only is change hard to actually start, to formulate rules to actually be fair is near impossible, since there is always more context to be had. Maybe only the extremes can be formalized, like "one person cannot have 1.000.000 times as much as another, since it is unrealistic to deliver that much value".