Profit is theft.

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Because without external investors, you would not be able to get enough funds to start and run a company of that magnitude.

There would be no taxes without any profit. It doesnt make sense to be against profit when modern society couldnt function without it. All taxes come from the private sector.

I have not inherited the money yet. I wont inherit it for decades. My parents have kicked me out a lot of times so I have been homeless multiple times. I currently live on less than 15,000 a year. None of my parents money is mine now. I can talk about whatever economic or other issues I want. I am free to say whatever I want on this site provided I dont break any rules. I am currently dirt poor but I will be well-off when my parents die.

Last edited by Texasmoneyman300 on 23 Dec 2025, 7:32 pm, edited 3 times in total.

It would be very for a massive oil company like Exxon or Chevron to be a co-op for multiple reasons.Big oil companies require tens to hundreds of billions and its borderline impossible for anyone other than a for-profit company to attract that kind of capital.Also a co-op would be under huge economic pressure when oil busts happen.Also the policial and economic pressure in the world is too unstable internationally for co-ops to have huge drilling programs.

Has anyone else here ever read A Conquest of Bread?

So what? I mean really so f*****g what? Perhaps in areas of philosophy or experience his status might be (rightly or wrongly) held against him. But on making a simple factual point it's as relevant as his skin colour.

I think that his trust fund is just a tax dodge set up to benefit his parents, who are sh!ts from what I can see.

And if he posted from that luxuriant position lets say, homeless drug addicts need to pull themselves together and sort their s**t out, that would be a relatable albeit still flawed counter. But he wasn't.

Businesses generally pay according to market rates. If you don't want to work for the going rate, someone else would probably be happy to have the job.

Do you all also think that businesses should be required to sell their products for the cost of production? If they did, why would anyone open a business at all?

As far as the pay issue, the answer is obvious. Open your own business instead of griping.

Profit is what allows buisness to grow to te size needed to employ large numbers if people.

Without profit, you would be spinning yarn in a mud hut you made with dung and straw.

Yes, some industries, by their very nature, require very large amounts of capital.

IMO those industries need to be regulated to prevent them from abusing their power. Decades ago, this was well-understood mainstream economic doctrine, but there has been way too much "de-regulation" since the 1980's.

IMO small businesses and worker cooperatives should be encouraged (e.g. via tax incentives) where feasible, and large corporations should be discouraged (e.g. via tax incentives) from attempting to take over those markets. Instead of attempting to drive small businesses and worker cooperatives out of business, large corporations should be encouraged (e.g. via tax incentives) to partner with already-existing businesses to help them become more efficient, more profitable, and/or more able to charge lower prices.

An example of the kind of takeover that I think should be discouraged, here in the U.S.A., is Uber and Lyft taking over the taxi and car service markets. The way they did this should have been illegal or at least carried a heavy tax penalty. They could have been encouraged to, instead, partner with the many already-existing taxi and car service companies to make it easier for people to arrange rides.

It's companies in competition with each other to stay alive, automation that's taking over a lot of the work and to that degree getting a lot of value add from PP&E and some from labor with that ratio varying between companies. That's where you can indeed look at the books, look at EBITDA, and see what ratio of net revenues they're paying out and then asking what they do with the profits. It's not inherently theft to grow, purchase more machinery, and create new jobs, it would be questionable if it's just getting run into the ground quarterly for the board of directors to extract dividends or for the CEO to have yachts.

I have a feeling that if AI turns most things into public goods we probably will have a situation where capitalism, at least as we practice it today, will fail in the next five years. What I've heard that seems compelling, David Shapiro (an AI researcher and fellow sperg) brought up that it will go from a labor-based economy to an automated asset economy, ie. you'll use AI to do your labor for you and your level of income over and above whatever the UBI stipend will be has a lot to do with how well you're able to bring about innovation and in particular leverage AI to make money. Also not to get too picayune, when I'm referring to 'AI' I don't mean AGI, I do mean things as simple as LLM's upward even if 'that's not real AI', it's on the gradient toward that thing and I feel like it's just conceptually easier to consider already a massive automation of research.

It's also important to remember the industrial revolution introduced automation and actually had the biggest impact on humans and created completely new forms of jobs. History repeating itself.
Stage 1. Age of empires: physical strength valued > brains
Stage 2. Age of merchants: Industrial revolution. Brains = physical labour
Stage 3. Internet: Brains > physical labour
Stage 4. AI: brains
Stage 5. AI self replicating robots (distant future where both brains and physical labour is redundent)
At each historic landmark jobs requiring physical labour were/will be replaced by automation.
Human jobs move from physical to more cognitive. Often new job opportunities arise. For example in Japan physically disabled are able to work from home via online interface with robots in customer service and even as remote tour guides.

Naturally market driven competition leads to greater automation and less reliance on human labour to maximise profit. the issue of whether profit is theft becomes redundant when we reach stage 5 as human labour will no longer be required.

But in 2026 the profitability of workers depends on how much value their labour > automation. As our value diminishes the level of so called theft becomes irrelevant.

The Energy Industry is a high-capital industry that is heavily regulated here in the states so not every high capital industry is free of lots of regulations.

So are you arguing that nonprofit companies don't exist? Newman's Own? That doesn't exist?

I'm not saying that there should be no profit. I'm saying all corporate profit is fair game for taxation since it's all stolen from the employees. I'm saying that corporations are not entitled to profits that they stole, not that they shouldn't be allowed to keep any of it.