Is Profit Bad? Some people will tell you so.

What are they telling you about your life?

Imagine you – or you and your family or a group of people – are in a forest.  Whether the time is the present, or in some distant past thousands of years ago, does not matter.  Imagine, to make matters worse, you have nothing – no clothes, no food, not even a pocket knife.

Survival is hand to mouth:  life is at its most primitive.  Your only choice is to find enough to eat, or starve.  Looking for food takes all your time and energy.  You do not even have a way to build some kind of shelter against the weather.  

The group is constantly on the move; it must constantly forage, rain or shine.  People spread out to broaden their search.  But at the end of the day, not everyone finds their way to the new camp.  Nobody has the energy to search for the missing.  The fate of the stragglers – those who are too old or too slow or who were attacked by a predator – will never be known.  

Then one day, you find a long, stout tree branch.  You sharpen the end to make a spear.  The animals around you were used to people being slow-moving and easy to avoid.  But now, with your spear, you kill one, and slaughter it for food.  

What a bounty!  What a profit your spear is!  The kill will mean food for days!  And for the first time, the skin can be used for clothing or as part of a lean-to or some kind of tent for protection.

A Supply of Food, Clothing and Shelter Is Profit!

Others see what you did, and make their own spears.  Soon your group is hunting together, as a coordinated team.  Those unable to hunt, such as pregnant women or the sick and injured, can remain at a semi-permanent camp, and still be useful cleaning skins, preparing food, etc.  More profit!

All that profit means survival is easier; more people can survive!  The people at camp can defend themselves, as can the hunters.  Predators are finding humans too dangerous – not the easy kill they used to be.  More profit!

The size of the group grows.  There are now more mouths to feed.  But the frequency of successful hunts declines as the number of animals is reduced.  Periodically, the group must pack up their skins, spears, and other tools, and migrate to a new location, where animals are more plentiful.

Agriculture

The next innovation is the cultivation of seeds, and tending the growing plants until they can be harvested for food.  At the same time, some animals are tamed, and herds can be maintained, to provide constant food and clothing.  What a great profit agriculture is!  

The group’s migrations can finally end.  With the regular food supply from agriculture, more people than ever can survive. With the new levels of profit, death rates drop, and people live longer.  

Profit Makes Innovation Possible

The group now has enough time to build permanent housing:  a village of real buildings, providing protection from the weather.  People can specialize:  the first blacksmith builds the first foundry and metal-working shop.  A permanent village and the development of specialized skills are a huge benefit – the people enjoy a life of terrific profit.

But all that civilized living does not mean life is problem-free.

From the very beginning, there were those who led the hunts – the chieftains.  

With agriculture, those same chieftains grow more demanding.  Like anyone, they enjoy the greater power.  But that dominance incudes demands that destroy profit – demands that hurt the profitability of the other villagers.  

For centuries, the arguments of political power versus the freedom of each individual have frequently been violent.  And the obvious solution often does not work:  kill those in power and let new leaders take over.  But political power is the same, no matter who is the person who holds it.

Power Corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

To escape that tyranny, throughout history small groups of people have left the villages, cities, or lands where they lived.  They searched for new beginnings, distant and separate from destructive tyranny.  

But how do you keep history from repeating itself?

Not too many hundred years ago, several groups crossed an ocean.  Their new beginnings were remarkably successful, and ultimately very profitable.  They chose to govern themselves – and they knew their history.  

To preserve their freedom, they divided the government into separate sections – the rule-makers, the rule-keepers, and the rule-judgers.  

Further, governing responsibilities were divided among local governments, state governments, and the government for the country as a whole.  No one person could get enough power – no matter what the reason, good or bad – to take their freedom.  

Freedom Is Profit

The era of chieftains and kings was over.  With that discovery of the formula for the preservation of freedom, the result is the keeping of property and the acquiring of even more profit.  Progress and the improvement of our lives can grow ever greater.  

Such freedom – a great profit – was used to build a country; a place where they could defend their lives and their property against any would-be invaders of the type still so prevalent in that outside world.

The new country itself was a crowning profit – making possible “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

Without profit, life is impossible.

From that first spear to freedom, everything beyond subsistence living is profit.

Knowingly or not, those who decry profit are advocates of misery, shortened lives, and death.

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