i won’t argue with your definition, which is basically the difference between costs and revenue, the standard finance definition. but, I don’t see it telling us anything about profit or whether a person is actually benefiting from profit or if anyone else around them is benefiting. In fact, people can make a “profit” and lose their shirt or the people working for them can lose everything even though they may be considered “employed”. others can break even and do great or even “lose” and do something that makes everyone better off in the future.

that definition doesn’t define the word and that is a problem. we know no more about profit than before, maybe less using that definition. i think because of that definition people incessantly argue about profit, whether it is good or bad,

under the definition that you are referring to, a firm that sells all its equipment may earn a huge profit during a period while the firm that makes a large capital investment that will benefit them in the future may show a loss.

by the same definition, the wage earner always shows a profit, yet if he is working far under his capacity or ability he is constantly losing. or if his labor is making someone else a ton of money, he is losing. or if his rent or interest is forced above competitive rates, he could "profit" 100k a year and still perpetually fall into greater debt.

a person could sell a 100k house for 80k [for whatever reason] and "make" a profit [if he bought it for less than that] , but it is actually the buyer who gained even tho he "spent" money or incurred a loss [of money]. the seller, who profited can't even repurchase the same house, so he is worse off than he was before in that sense..

you are 100% right about currency which distorts value.

personally, i don't think profit could exist without force. but, I would define profit as that which exists above free competitive wage, rent and interest. so, if your trader got 12 cents a pound for his wheat instead of the competitive price of 10 cents, he profited 2 cents, if not, he just made a competitve wage.

that's why while I can't argue with your definition, I don't think we can use it to tell us much about what profit really is or if those involved actually benefitted. I suppose you could broaden your definition to include "all" costs through all time or something to that effect.

If you provide a service or product and get more in return than you spent providing/producing, that difference is profit.

So if you’re doing anything in life and not making a profit, you’re losing (money, wheat, whatever you’re dealing with) or staying at the same level. To rise to our current standard of living and even to rise to living in caves, we needed profit.

Profit is good. It means you made a smart decision.

Yes, that was my goal. No worries, communication is often misunderstood

I'm pretty sure we can tell if a person making "profit" (my definition) is better off than before. If everything else stays the same, a person making profit on a transaction has more of something than before. More of which is not trivial to define, since he might lose wheat and gain money. We need a currency to be able to calculate profit, and currencies are very problematic at the moment, but if the person makes a profit in the trade he has more than he did before. Thus, when everyone makes profit on their transactions, everyone benefits. And nobody would voluntarily make transactions in which he doesn't make a profit – it would be a waste of resources and money. Exceptions are gifts, charity, etc. in which people gain a very-hard-to-measure or even immeasurable resource.

I'm curious how someone who makes a profit could lose his shirt in the process, unless he is selling it for the profit (in which he could buy the same shirt again and have money left).

@Kevin

Return on investment is just one kind of profit and fine per se, in my opinion. Of course the whole financial sector is heavily influenced by coercion and has always been.

Am I saying profit (even on capital gains) is good? Yes.

Am I saying Goldman Sachs management profiting from stolen bailout money is good? No.

I think that even the loss of a monopoly on money would completely even the battlefield on the whole financial front. And the internet is the best chance ever to accomplish this in an anarchistic way. Just like in A Lodging for Wayfaring Men (though I haven't finished it yet).

you haven’t defined profit, you have simply shown an example of fee for service. the work of the trader is to get the wheat from A to B. his fee is his wage.

"Gene, the trader produces profit. He does it by helping to arbitrage, hedge or provide hedges/insurance, and to allocate capital to more efficient uses. Or not. Who cares. If you make a profit by voluntary action, it’s fine."

I would prefer to read an explanation that isn't chasing its own tail and relying on its own internal meanings and/or "secret handshake" translations of rather broad concepts like:

profit

arbitrage

hedge

insure

efficient

capital

trade

I can't see the point of my accepting that "profit" is a value. Why should I accept that? What compels me to value "profit"?

Absent the high value of profit — making it its own value, making it a goal — there is no point to arbitrage, hedging, insuring. These all are premised on profit being its own value.

If you can't see the inherent problem in hypothecating a value where none exists in concrete, I wonder how you can hope to follow Mr DeNardo's argument.

How is money created?
Who are the “Selected Traders”?
What do legal tender laws prohibit and protect?
What is the role of the FDIC [and other socialized capital gaurantees] in the economy?
What effect does the firm and high wage tax rate have on redistribution of capital as opposed to the tax breaks and lower rates given to capital?
free state franchised limited liability for corporations?
What role does social welfare have on allowing industry to return profits to itself?
What role does the IMF and World Bank have in indebting third world countries in order to prepare infrastructure for the multinationals?
What role does subsidized american infrastructure have on advantaging centralized production as opposed to localized?
what role does regulation have on eliminating price competition and minimum safety competition from smaller firms?
government coerced repayment of “loan” types contracts as opposed to classification of “investment” contract and “risk of marketplace?
BAILOUTS?
What role does taxing the land of dwellings and exempting business, and large acreages devoted to timber or largescale agribusiness have on redistribution?
What role did the large scale giveaway of 10% of our continental land mass to the railroads have on the present role and capital concentration of the resource corporations?
present discounted federal giveaway of resources [by the way, reference 1995 deepwater relief act if you want to know why bp was deep in the gulf]?

the cost of capital is due to the control of capital. free capital would have no value other than use value.
some of the countless mechanisms are listed above.
the industries you mention have concentration of capital in the form of money. capital takes many forms and it would be worthwhile to study that.
do you not think microsoft has concentrated capital due to state IP laws regardless of their cash reserves? Nike, BP, Citibank, etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum?