Rethinking profit

Okay, the feeling of the meeting seems to be that profit can never be defined as "money you need."

I could sort this by redefining "need" for individuals to include books, CDs, a holiday every couple of years, that nice almost-Tiffany lampshade you saw in B & Q, or the Xbox Kinect that little Darius or Tiffany absolutely HAS to have or his/her life will be OVER--but then it would doubtless get redefined for corporations in the same way. Whether a corporation needs to go on holiday, or redecorate its offices top to bottom (while simultaneously laying off twenty per cent of its staff), or whether Monstrous Megacorp really needs to engulf Gargantuan Holdings because all the other cool corporations are doing it, is a moot question.

But this is the answer to Magician's point; si profitum requiris, circumspice. You and I take our profits in tangible form, as books and toys and musical instruments, or as it might otherwise be described, clutter. If it gives us pleasure, makes us feel better, gives us a reason to go on working, then it's profit. Whether that's a need or not is up to the individual to decide; again, if it is, it's a need that corporations, as such, don't share.

Speaking of shares...buying a share in a company is a one-off payment, and if it indicates a belief in that corporation and a desire to assist it in its work then that's very laudable. As far as I know, shareholders aren't required to go on paying every time the company needs a hand, and they're still regarded as holding their shares, so they don't lose out unless the company actually goes bust. I'm not sure how this bears on the question at this stage.

But I'm okay with it if people feel that the only difference between £875m declared by Colossalcorp and the £25.80 you or I might have left over at the end of the month is one of degree. It's a pretty large degree, is all.

Re-rethinking profit

Oh, what was that line? Oh, yes:

SAM: (on protecting oil companies from being justifiably sued when the cheap tankers they choose to buy break down and spill oil all over the ecosphere) They're our client. They don't lose legal protection because they make a lot of money.

JOSH: I can't believe no-one ever wrote a folk song about that.

(The West Wing, "In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen", part one)

I may write it myself. I never knew big business was so philanthropic, but apparently it is. Or maybe it's just true that whatever you attack, someone will leap to its defence.

Actually, I'm not going to pursue this. I've done religion and politics already this year, I think I can excuse myself from economics for a while. Where I see blatant avarice and dishonesty exposed in dozens of cases of profiteering, insider dealing, grossly inflated salaries and bonuses, speculation on subprime mortgages that--I thought--caused the banking collapse and huge government bailouts, and all made possible by the existence of huge non-human entities without conscience or morality or any urge other than to amass more and more and more profit without end...maybe it really is all just the way things are supposed to be, and if it wasn't then all of us would be even poorer than we are. I don't know. I'm just an unemployed writer, and I've never been above the bottom of the heap so I don't know what things look like from up there.

Sorry.