Like at some point won’t all of the profit be squeezed out of society?
You’ve discovered capitalism’s super hidden secret; infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
[Muse performs “The 2nd Law:Unsustainable” in the background]
How the hell did I miss this? I physically own that album. It’s kinda like orchestral dubstep. 🤘
It is if you count your profit in terms of percentage of global profit, and then, should that break down, in terms of global wealth.
Similar to how it’s impossible to reach the speed of light, it’s not possible to reach 100% of global wealth unless you’re the only sentient being left alive, but you can get arbitrarily close. And getting closer requires more and more human suffering, as reaching light speed requires more and more energy.
Only time will tell whether the rich will (publicly) switch to this metric because so far, “Newtonian” measurements of profit have been sufficient, and fractions of global wealth generation look piddly by comparison.
This article explores that. The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth
Yes, there is a limit.
First, you need to look at the difference between 1. money and 2. value.
That theoretical one rich person (or company) might own all money printing facilities in the world, and therefore can make endless numbers. That is money, not value.
There is theoretically no limit for the money. But this is meaningless, because this kind of inflated money would be valueless.
The one rich person might own everybody else, and all their belongings, and all that they can produce.
That’s all the value then. That’s your limit.
In case you want a serious treatment, for nominal profit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#The_Keynesian_multiplier
For real profit, labor productivity must put some limit on it somewhere, but I have never seen anybody look at it.
Either way, “profit” is not something you squeeze out of society. The nominal one can’t be unbalanced, and the real one is hard to even track.
You may get some better answers if think in terms of wealth inequality. But that one won’t appear on the coarse level of the wikipedia article.
I beg to differ, how the modern shareholder capitalism works is nothing but squeezing profit out of society
Well profit can be defined as money_in - money_out therefore the maximum profit is the least amount of money_out with the maximum amount of money_in. So let’s assume that the minimum amount of money_out is 0. So it becomes a question of what is the maximum of money_in well currencies are generally just numbers. So we need to know the total amount of matter in the universe and the value that an organization of that total amount can represent. If the universe is infinite then infinite profit, if not then there is some number. However, at this point we delve into the zone of philosophy as we might need to take some of that matter out to have some witnesses. But still might not buy you a house in 2024.
Yes. It’s when the workers are driven to the point that they cannot do enough reproductive labor and/or they revolt.
One way historic economic systems prevented total market capture by family dynasties was large families.
A big family dividing a concern will eventually sell it, break it up so it can be split.
With smaller families this division will take much longer, and with corporate personhood we are in a new weird self perpetual bureaucratic regimen
No. To my knowledge there isn’t a scenario where this is possible. Greater inequality means greater profits.
That is probably correct to the phrasing of the question but I don’t think it’s correct to the spirit of the question .
If I have a billion dollars and everyone else has one dollar, I am powerful.
Time moves forward, inflation, whatever.
I have 2 billion dollars now and everyone else has 2 dollars.
Nothing has substantially changed in that scenario.
But even if we only allow me to grow:
Again I have 2 billion dollars now and everyone else still has 1 dollar.
Nothing has substantially changed.
That’s my disagreement. There is a limit. Diminished returns.
The difference between a one bathroom house and a 2 bathroom house is huge. The difference between a 20 bathroom house and a 21 bathroom house is basically meaningless.
You can only be “so” rich and people can only get “so” poor. At a certain point the change isn’t meaningful, but once you pass a a certain threshold it’s worse than meaningless. It becomes worthless
If you have all the money in the entire world and no one else has any money… The money no longer has any value at all. It then becomes pointless and valueless.
I’m not smart enough to point out the exact line. There is a line where the rich can’t be richer in a significant way. Elon musk i think is at the point. He could lose 50 billion dollars or gain 50 billion dollar tomorrow. It wouldn’t impact his life or our life.
Likewise people can only get so poor before the concept of currency breaks down completely. We kind of see a glimpse of that with credit scores. I have bad credit. I don’t care that I have bad credit. I’m not going to own a home anyway. I don’t care if a credit card company sues me because I have no liquidatable property or items. Even my wages can’t be garnished because my child support maxes that out alrwady. My debt and credit score are meaningless. Money itself can get that low as well. If the imbalance gets too far the money becomes worthless.
There is absolutely a limit. There is a line.
You can’t find a line because there is no line. When you give up completely there’s another one to take your place and a good lesson to be learned by all.
Isnt that why there are transnational conglomerates?
In a sense yes. Once a company has captured the entire (global) economy, including banking, it would control who to give credit to, who to employ, what to pay them, what their own products are priced.
They could at most reap as “profit” what they give out in credit and payment.
There may be sub-limits for capturing entire industries.
Huh? At any point in time, even if there are 2 humans left in society, and one human procures something and gives it to the other guy in exchange for something more than what cost him, it will be profit?
No. They can always print more money. Money is no longer backed by anything other than faith; if people believe money has value, there’s no hard set limit on that value
Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall
Maximum profit would be achieved by charging the most for the least stuff. And minimizing the cost of that bare minimum. You can do that by eliminating competition so that your prices are the only option. You’d end up with something like feudalism.
But it also depends if you target maximum profits as compared to the population, or maximum profits over all. If maximum profits over all, you’d want to grow the work force as much as possible, maybe colonizing other planets or inhospitable regions of earth.
But maximizing the value of those profits to you requires development to get you more value for less resources. Being a king hundreds of years ago still didn’t get you decent plumbing. So you’d want effecent ways to maximize your pleasure for the lowest cost. Some brain computer interface could be useful there, so that you can create full planets more cheaply.
What happens after all of humanity are enslaved as software devs for the god kings personal virtual reality, I couldn’t guess.
Theoretically? I’d imagine it’s equal (or close) to the difference between global money supply and global money supply but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking
