Okay, I see what the problem here is. My man does not understand (perhaps willingingly) what a profit is, he just thinks that it's when you acquire an income. Profit is the dividend left over when you've paid all other expenses. For a private firm those expenses defined in terms of "Fixed Inputs" (raw material & capital expenditures), and "Fluid Inputs" (direct compensation to labor employed by the firm in the form of wages & benefits), the names & implications of these terms used of course implies the goal. The successful firm ideally seeks to acquire the greatest output of product, the greatest inflow of revenue to itself, at the lowest level of expenditure on labor; because that is the cost that it has the greatest direct control over, through hiring/staffing practices & wage-rates.
That is the precise way by which the private firm seeks to exploit labor. Labor cannot exploit a private firm in the same way under Captialism, because they cannot (in the main part) define away their own expenditures, nor can they define their own wage-rate; at least in not the absence of large-scale collective bargaining, which does not exist at any serious level of saturation in the United States.
in my experience, most of the people who defend capitalism as an economic system have no idea what capitalism is, what economics is, or how to communicate the basic vocabulary of business management/accounting. the conflation of "revenue" and "profit" is one of the most common themes.
this is extremely annoying as someone who diligently took those classes and even fringe topics like non profit managerial economics, all taught under the ideology of economic liberalism, only to later study marx out of curiosity.
nothing drives home the ideological nature of economic liberalism quite like the realization that most of its defenders cannot articulate what it is, but "know" deep down that it is absolutely correct, has no contradictions or alternatives.
Most liberals think capitalism is when there's free markets and competition and consumers are all rational people making savvy choices. None of this is unique to capitalism though, that's just regular markets. Because in their concept of capitalism, actual capitalists and capital are abstracted to anything from a CEO to an actor to pretty much any rich person
Okay, I see what the problem here is. My man does not understand (perhaps willingingly) what a profit is, he just thinks that it's when you acquire an income. Profit is the dividend left over when you've paid all other expenses. For a private firm those expenses defined in terms of "Fixed Inputs" (raw material & capital expenditures), and "Fluid Inputs" (direct compensation to labor employed by the firm in the form of wages & benefits), the names & implications of these terms used of course implies the goal. The successful firm ideally seeks to acquire the greatest output of product, the greatest inflow of revenue to itself, at the lowest level of expenditure on labor; because that is the cost that it has the greatest direct control over, through hiring/staffing practices & wage-rates.
That is the precise way by which the private firm seeks to exploit labor. Labor cannot exploit a private firm in the same way under Captialism, because they cannot (in the main part) define away their own expenditures, nor can they define their own wage-rate; at least in not the absence of large-scale collective bargaining, which does not exist at any serious level of saturation in the United States.
in my experience, most of the people who defend capitalism as an economic system have no idea what capitalism is, what economics is, or how to communicate the basic vocabulary of business management/accounting. the conflation of "revenue" and "profit" is one of the most common themes.
this is extremely annoying as someone who diligently took those classes and even fringe topics like non profit managerial economics, all taught under the ideology of economic liberalism, only to later study marx out of curiosity.
nothing drives home the ideological nature of economic liberalism quite like the realization that most of its defenders cannot articulate what it is, but "know" deep down that it is absolutely correct, has no contradictions or alternatives.
Most liberals think capitalism is when there's free markets and competition and consumers are all rational people making savvy choices. None of this is unique to capitalism though, that's just regular markets. Because in their concept of capitalism, actual capitalists and capital are abstracted to anything from a CEO to an actor to pretty much any rich person