/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1847135]

How does profit work? Is the profit of one man the loss of another? Or is there an actual overall growth in wealth and if so were does the wealth come from?

[Anonymous No.1847143]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Watch this, capitalist swine.

[Anonymous No.1847209]

the only way to get "profit" is to provide utility for someone else.

of course we are willing to fuck shit up for 300%, but in practice you need creating lots of awesome, useful stuff for 300%, not fucking shit up. the picture thus depicts one of those typical leftist half-thoughts.

[Anonymous No.1847224]

>Is the profit of one man the loss of another?
Of course not. In every trade and transcation both parties profit, else they wouldn't enter the contract. Business is all about cooperating.

>is there an actual overall growth in wealth and if so were does the wealth come from?
Actual overall growth in wealth comes purely from technological, organisational, educational etc. advancements. These amount to our GDP/capita growth.

In other words, You can afford an inredibly complex product like a computer because of the cooperation of thousands of people for many generations. All these cooperations consists of thousands of contracts (work contracts, buying/selling of resources, chips etc.) where every party made a profit.

[Anonymous No.1847231]

people exchange money for goods and services that they benefit from.
nobody loses.
as far as currency goes, it just cycles through the economy; changes hands until it's right back in the pocket of some consumer

[Anonymous No.1847279]

>>1847135
Read Atlas Shrugged you communist enemy of reason.

[Anonymous No.1847298]

>>1847279

Lol libertarian.

Your philosophy is poorly thought out.

[Anonymous No.1847306]

>>1847298
No.

[Anonymous No.1847308]

Profit is just getting back more than you spent for it.
If I bought $10 of supplies, and built something that both you and I agree is worth $20. You would get a $20 product that might actually serve to be more useful than the $20 you paid for it. And I get $10, so I can make and sell more.

The money that I make is sort of a payment for my services. Even in modern times, this is essentially how it works, it is just WAY more complicated than that.

But at the same time, shit has gotten out of control is some aspects, and need loosening up in a few others.

[Anonymous No.1847312]

The profit basically comes from your work.

Think of you working for yourself. When you work alone collecting some herbs, you profit because you invest your work but get the herbs, and you are better of than doing nothing and starving. Now you can take two people, one collects herbs the other catches fish. Both are better off when they exchange some of the stuff they collect (more variety, less unneeded surplus stuff), so both make a profit. With our society/cooperation/technology these effects become much stronger. Money isn't even really needed in a free market economy, it would also work with barter trades, just less efficient. How money gets into the economy is another interesting subject though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation

[Anonymous No.1847328]

>>1847306
yeah, why make a sensible, content rich, educated, well thought out post like everyone else in this thread?

Just post a pic with some very old lame pre-internet paleomeme, instaawseome post!

[Anonymous No.1847341]

There is a finite amount of wealth, it is obvious that if someone profits, someone else has to lose something.

[Anonymous No.1847345]

>>1847306
>>1847279
lololol my dad got rich and now I think we should kill poor people.

The current welfare + free market system is very nice, thanks.

Actually, if I could make it so that no parent is allowed to pay for anything for their child after they turn 18, I would. But that is just my vengeful spirit for having to start with literally nothing first.

[Anonymous No.1847349]

>>1847328
Because there's no profit in writing a wall of text. Isn't it obvious?

[Anonymous No.1847353]

>>1847341
wealth isn't finite. if you work more, there is more wealth.

[Anonymous No.1847356]

>>1847345
I moved out of my parents's house four months after turning 18 (pretty much the time it took to find an apartment). They don't pay anything for me anymore. I don't want them to.

Your point?

[Anonymous No.1847360]

>>1847341
Is that why the world as a whole is richer today, than say, 300 years ago? Even the poorest countries today are better off than 300 years ago. Less so than the richest countries, of course, but things haven't gotten worse for them.

[Anonymous No.1847361]

>>1847341
If wealth were finite, the rich countries wouldn't be as rich as they are.

[Anonymous No.1847363]

>>1847345

Lol u aspie.

Providing further evidence that libertarians are incapable of using even basic logic or critical thinking skills.

[Anonymous No.1847365]

>>1847361
Wealth is finite though, if it were infinite... well why would there be poor people?

Wealth is finite, but it is not constant in amount. More wealth can be created.

[Anonymous No.1847362]

>>1847349
There is. I don't feel like a lameass pseudointellectual idiot. It's a good deal.

[Anonymous No.1847367]

>>1847363
>implying he's not satirizing libertarians

[Anonymous No.1847369]

>>1847353
You are depleting natural resources in order to create that wealth. Future generations are the ones on the losing side of this bargain.

[Anonymous No.1847370]

Everyone in this thread is an idiot

To achieve profit one must enlist the help of an accountant, whatever else you do is irrelevant

[Anonymous No.1847371]

>>1847367

i jus faerted lol

[Anonymous No.1847375]

Only if you get your profit from literally mugging someone -- and sometimes stock trading (it's not as clear cut as one might think in stock trading though). Most legal means of making a profit come from a portion of the wealth you add to the economy through some sort of productivity. Sometimes wealth comes from nowhere, and that's called a bubble, and that wealth evaporates, as it is not based on actual value. When that happens, if you get out before the collapse, your profit is at the expense of those who don't.

[Anonymous No.1847377]

>>1847369
>implying we're not better off due our parents and grandparents having exploited natural resources
I guess you think all those buildings from 30 years ago, all that infrastructure from 30 years or even more time ago and so on are bad for us. It would have been better if those natural resources had been left for us.

Fucking capital accumulation how does it work.

[Anonymous No.1847378]

Profit works as follows:
#1
You eat
#2
You gain energy
#3
You use your own energy to create something that is of no use to you but of use to somebody else
#4
You trade=profit


???
profit

works aswell.

[Anonymous No.1847385]

>>1847363
>implying that what I said means that I am a libertarian
>implying that my point wasn't essentially just that.

Our current system fundamentally works so that we help those that attempt to help themselves. There are a lot of kinks, but if somebody in Washington would just do their job and work out the kinks, things would be fine.

Mixed market is nice. I like it. It helped me help myself, and now I am doing better in life. But I really needed the bank's help and the government's welfare and capping of what those banks can do when I loaned from them to do it.
The government enforces capitalism as well as providing welfare. There are problems, but for the most part, it is good.

[Anonymous No.1847395]

Profit is revenue less expenses

In philosophical terms, profit is what you capture for organizing production or services in a way society deems praiseworthy

its is obviously not a zero sum game and wealth is obviously finite, if you can't reconcile these thoughts then you should just give up on economics and philosphy

[Anonymous No.1847403]

>>1847385
>somebody in Washington would just do their job
Except their job is pretty much steal as much as they can for themselves and their buddies while they can.

It's pretty naive to expect government to act without self-interest. Power attracts the corruptible.

[Anonymous No.1847410]

>>1847377
Wait until we run out of oil because they burned it all as fuel and we won't be able to make plastic any longer. Let's see how well that goes.

[Anonymous No.1847412]

Wealth is simple. It entirely material. Wealth is created by simply making things, nothing more nothing less. The more things a society can make, and the more productive its workforce, the more wealth it has. Also, wealth accumulates. Time can be considered a channeling of wealth but not a creator.

[Anonymous No.1847415]

>>1847403
It's not their job, it is just what they do anyways

[Anonymous No.1847417]

>>1847410
If we didn't have oil to burn for the past 100 years we would certainly be less wealthy than we are now. We have fully realized the benefits of oil even though we are going to run out, its not like the oil was burned for fun, it was used to create wealth.

[Anonymous No.1847442]

>>1847410
So what you're saying is nobody should make plastic, because then somebody in the future won't be able to make plastic. But that somebody in the future shouldn't make plastic either. After all, somebody in his future won't be able to make plastic if he does. And so in. In short, no human should EVER produce or consume, for the sake of future generations.

This is silly.

Also, market forces adapting to scarcity and so on.

[Anonymous No.1847450]

>>1847442
I love how /sci/ manages to turn anything into a moral statement.

No, you can do whatever the fuck you want. You could steal from the little match girl and set her on fire for all I care. But you can't try to defend the idea that you can create wealth out of nothing. Someone, sooner or later, will pay for the wealth you are "creating".

[Anonymous No.1847457]

>>1847450
Oh I don't think you can create wealth out of nothing. Creating wealth always requires using material resources. Sometimes they are already there and you just combine them in a new way, say, building a new machine from metal. Sometimes entire new resources are discovered. Oil wasn't a useful resource until man found a way to use it. But whatever is used for A cannot be used for B at the same time. That's where the whole problem of economizing arises.

[Anonymous No.1847464]

>>1847450
>But you can't try to defend the idea that you can create wealth out of nothing. Someone, sooner or later, will pay for the wealth you are "creating".

That's not true. Oil is a good counterexample, but from the two production factors work and natural resources, work starts to become more and more relevant, especially in our knowledge based economy. In the future, limited natural resources probably won't be a big issue anymore. Wealth can't come from nothing, but in theory, abundant/regrowing resources + work are sufficient.

[Anonymous No.1847466]

For the most part profits is a good thing
I mean nobody is forcing anyone to buy things
If somebody does is because they see the benefit of it