In search of evil

TC posed this - Question of the day... Is profit evil?

What is profit? Profit, grossly defined is whatever is left after deducting all expenses. 

Under this definition, a good bookkeeper and business owner can make sure a business never makes a profit. Simply raise expenses until they exactly match the income and no profit.

Lemme insert a word before expenses - necessary.

Profit redefined is whatever is left after deducting all necessary expenses. 

Now we be getting' somewhere.

NECESSARY

The question then becomes, what is necessary. Fortunately, we have that one pretty much nailed to the wall.

Necessary is what it takes to live. To live you need air, water, food and shelter. You can live a few minutes without air. Some critters can go pretty much indefinitely without air, but humans ain't that way.

You can go 3-4 days without water. Unless you are these guys.

Depending on the particular person, living without food is possible anywhere from a few days to a month. 

About shelter. This is environmentally and geographically specific. People living in the tropic zones just need something to keep the rain off sometimes. Clothes are not needed in a lot of cases. The further north or south people live, the more protection they need from the environment. Get into the polar regions and heavy clothing and substantial shelter is necessary.

PROFIT

With the necessities covered, then anything else by definition must be profit.

For people living in tropical zones, profit can be shoes. Literally. Do people living in tropical zones really need shoes? For most of the history of humanity, they have lived without shoes.

No matter where a person lives in the world, a cell phone is profit. Humanity existed without this technology until the 1980s. Many people still live without one.

HYPOCRITE MUCH?

If profit is anything exceeding the basic necessities, then certainly more than 95 percent of the people living in industrialized nations (whether under socialism, communism, capitalism or a combination) experience and have profit.

Those people who scream "profit is evil" have a closet full of clothes, multiple sets of shoes, live in a dwelling that far exceeds their needs, have discretionary income, etc etc etc. They make a profit.

But being a hypocrite is part of the human condition.

EVIL

Which brings us to the last word, Evil. What is evil? At the risk of someone shouting "GODWIN'S LAW" at me, I tell you Adolf Hitler did not believe he was an evil man or what he was doing through the Holocaust was evil. (If you do not believe the Holocaust happened, never, ever make any effort to communicate with me.) Those behind the Russian pogroms did not believe they were evil. 

Here's a fast definition of evil - That which is opposed to the interests of the person defining evil.

Simple. Direct. Accurate.

IS PROFIT EVIL?

Back to the central question. Is profit evil? It certainly can be, depending on who is doing the defining.

Generally, those who define profit as evil are looking at what someone else has and get jealous. They stare down at their smartphones, post angry Tweets and invective on Facebook.

Profit much?