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To understand whether the profit motive is desirable, we must first
grasp the goals of a life properly lived. These goals are twofold; on
the first level, survival is the goal of sustaining one's
biological existence and preventing one's downward slide toward
poverty, ruination, and death. On the second level, flourishing
is the extension of one's control over the external reality – the
ability to harness ever more elements in the service of one's life.
In the process of living,
every man – provided that he acts and uses his reason at all – will
gain certain benefits from the external reality. He will also incur
certain expenses in order to act in the ways he chooses. If he
breaks even – if his gains are equal to his expenses – then he has
accomplished the goal of survival; he is no worse off than he was when
he started. But neither is he better off. In order to accomplish the
goal of flourishing, his gains must be greater than his
expenses. In other words, he needs to make a profit.
It is vitally important
to understand that making profits is the only way to flourish. One
cannot consistently extend one's control over the external reality if
one keeps losing one's assets or if one merely breaks even. Profits
can come in many different forms; they can be intellectual profits or
gains of knowledge, technical profits or gains of skill, material
profits or gains of property, physiological profits or gains in health
and fitness, social profits or gains in valuable relationships, or
monetary profits or gains of money. The value each individual assigns
to these different kinds of profits is highly contextual; it depends
on the ways in which that individual wants to flourish.
Virtually nobody will
condemn every single kind of profit, even though many people
will deny that certain types of profit are, in fact, profits. Oddly
enough, the type of profit that draws the greatest condemnation is
monetary profit. This condemnation is wholly unwarranted.
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A universally accepted medium of exchange |
Monetary profit is a kind
of profit that can be most easily harnessed to the pursuit of the
greatest variety of ends. While it might be true to an extent that
"money cannot buy everything," it certainly can go a long way to help
one fulfill any of one's objectives. Money is a universally accepted
medium of exchange; it can be traded for a wide range of goods or
services far more conveniently than any other commodity in most
situations. Money can buy books or pay for courses that will give a
person knowledge and skills. Money can buy training equipment to
increase one's health and fitness. Money can buy leisure goods used to
rejuvenate one's energies and improve one's standard of living. Money
can even buy gifts to friends to sustain positive social
relationships. Furthermore, money can be invested into valuable assets
to generate additional money. If flourishing is one's goal, money
should at least play an important role in attaining it.
Profit is moral because
flourishing and improving one's life are moral; profit by definition
cannot be destructive to one's own life. Yet some claim that profit is
destructive to the lives of others. This, too, cannot be.
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