Profit is Moral: The Ethical Case for the Profit Motive

All too often today we hear condemnations of the profit motive as destructive and uncaring. But is it really? Or is the profit motive one of the noblest forces that can impel a man to act?

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 the man 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.