> as well as a reasonable profit to cover both expected future support and future R&D for improvements and/or new products.
That would be a weird definition of profit. Profit is what is left after expenses (like future support and R&D). But I will admit R&D is an oddball (there a taxation difference between R&D, compared against earning profits then investing the profits into a startup).
Do you have a pension, or own shares, or want to own your own business? Profit and some types of interest are rewards for risk.
But yeah, people think they pay too much for everything, that profits are unethical, and most people in wealthy countries don't understand how they get their lifestyle, and then get ignorantly angry at everything!
That's fine. I'm using layman's definitions of these words so that we can avoid the "What do you mean you don't want my business to make a profit?!?! What sort of MONSTER are you??" style of soundbites. Jargon has its place and can be very, very, very valuable. However, in the realm of economics, jargon obscures far more often than it illuminates.
> But yeah, people think they pay too much for everything...
Some people do, yes. If you're of the opinion that businesses working together to ensure that they extract every penny possible from all of their customers would not result in people consistently paying too much for everything, then I ask you why you're not taking the amount of money that you're underpaying for each and all of your goods and services and donating that (whether to charity, or directly to the businesses that are undercharging you). [0] Don't forget to structure your donations so that you have to choose between having the occasional luxury or maintaining a very small emergency savings fund... after all, all of that consumer surplus needs to be captured, doesn't it?
[0] Assuming that you're not already doing this, of course.
That's why they said "reasonable profit" not just "profit". Most people regard it as unfair or even immoral to charge dramatically more than how the parent describes "reasonable profit".
People probably regard excessive profits as immoral for a variety of reasons:
There are situations where people have little choice but to accept a deal. E.g. imagine someone requiring a drowning person to agree to pay a million dollars to be rescued.
Increased profits are often "unearned" in that they don't stem from something like working harder or innovating. Encouraging innovation and hard work is one of the primary justifications given for capitalism.
Society's operation is often based on the assumption that things will be priced perfectly. E.g. no one would be able to retire if companies where able to perfectly match prices and pay.
The rich hurting the poor in order to become even more rich is considered immoral in almost all philosophies.
> Encouraging innovation and hard work is one of the primary justifications given for capitalism.
Yep. And it's very important that the folks managing our generally-capitalist economy to force businesses to act against their own self-interests and engage in innovation and hard work, rather than milking cash cows for perpetuity. [0]
> Society's operation is often based on the assumption that things will be priced perfectly.
Did you mean to say "priced imperfectly"? If so, then I agree. The same goes for enforcement of laws, actually... which is why largely-unrestricted superhuman surveillance and information correlation powers are such a threat.
> The rich hurting the poor in order to become even more rich is considered immoral in almost all philosophies.
You don't even have to get questions of morality involved.
1) Soaking people for every penny they have means that folks don't have money to buy anything else, which makes it dreadful hard for anything new to enter "the market", because with what money would anyone purchase it? (Not to mention, how the hell can you handle emergency expenses if everyone else is soaking you for all of your money?)
2) People who don't have money for some luxuries are unhappy people. People who don't have money for emergency expenses are very unhappy people. If you have enough people unhappy for long enough, they're going to behave drastically. Maybe they're going to drop out of your system. Maybe they're going to forcefully upend your system.
[0] To be clear, there are products out there that are high quality and need no improvement. It's fine for a company to sell the same solid product or service at a reasonable price from now until the end of time. That's -IMO- the ideal situation for a company to be in. What's NOT fine is if that company prevents other companies from selling similar (or functionally identical) products/services, OR if that company suddenly decides that they need to massively increase the price, decrease the quality (or both) of the product/service.
That would be a weird definition of profit. Profit is what is left after expenses (like future support and R&D). But I will admit R&D is an oddball (there a taxation difference between R&D, compared against earning profits then investing the profits into a startup).
Do you have a pension, or own shares, or want to own your own business? Profit and some types of interest are rewards for risk.
But yeah, people think they pay too much for everything, that profits are unethical, and most people in wealthy countries don't understand how they get their lifestyle, and then get ignorantly angry at everything!