profit

69:3.11The early traders were women; they were em­ployed as spies, car­ry­ing on com­merce as a side line. Pres­ently trade ex­panded, the women act­ing as in­ter­me­di­aries—job­bers. Then came the mer­chant class, charg­ing a com­mis­sion, profit, for their ser­vices. Growth of group barter de­vel­oped into com­merce; and fol­low­ing the ex­change of com­modi­ties came the ex­change of skilled la­bor.

173:1.11This cleans­ing of the tem­ple dis­closes the Mas­ter’s at­ti­tude to­ward com­mer­cial­iz­ing the prac­tices of re­li­gion as well as his de­tes­ta­tion of all forms of un­fair­ness and prof­i­teer­ing at the ex­pense of the poor and the un­learned. This episode also demon­strates that Je­sus did not look with ap­proval upon the re­fusal to em­ploy force to pro­tect the ma­jor­ity of any given hu­man group against the un­fair and en­slav­ing prac­tices of un­just mi­nori­ties who may be able to en­trench them­selves be­hind po­lit­i­cal, fi­nan­cial, or ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal power. Shrewd, wicked, and de­sign­ing men are not to be per­mit­ted to or­ga­nize them­selves for the ex­ploita­tion and op­pres­sion of those who, be­cause of their ide­al­ism, are not dis­posed to re­sort to force for self-pro­tec­tion or for the fur­ther­ance of their laud­able life projects.

132:5.17“3. As long as men choose to con­duct the world’s busi­ness by trade and barter, they are en­ti­tled to a fair and le­git­i­mate profit. Ev­ery trades­man de­serves wages for his ser­vices; the mer­chant is en­ti­tled to his hire. The fair­ness of trade and the hon­est treat­ment ac­corded one’s fel­lows in the or­ga­nized busi­ness of the world cre­ate many dif­fer­ent sorts of profit wealth, and all these sources of wealth must be judged by the high­est prin­ci­ples of jus­tice, hon­esty, and fair­ness. The hon­est trader should not hes­i­tate to take the same profit which he would gladly ac­cord his fel­low trader in a sim­i­lar trans­ac­tion. While this sort of wealth is not iden­ti­cal with in­di­vid­u­ally earned in­come when busi­ness deal­ings are con­ducted on a large scale, at the same time, such hon­estly ac­cu­mu­lated wealth en­dows its pos­ses­sor with a con­sid­er­able eq­uity as re­gards a voice in its sub­se­quent dis­tri­bu­tion.

• mighty civilizer augmented by desire to serve

70:3.5The ab­sence of a com­mon lan­guage has al­ways im­peded the growth of peace groups, but money has be­come the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of mod­ern trade. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is largely held to­gether by the in­dus­trial mar­ket. The gain mo­tive is a mighty civ­i­lizer when aug­mented by the de­sire to serve.

• doomed unless augmented by service motives
• self-serving; incompatible with teachings of Jesus

71:6.1Pres­ent-day profit-mo­ti­vated eco­nomics is doomed un­less profit mo­tives can be aug­mented by ser­vice mo­tives. Ruth­less com­pe­ti­tion based on nar­row-minded self-in­ter­est is ul­ti­mately de­struc­tive of even those things which it seeks to main­tain. Ex­clu­sive and self-serv­ing profit mo­ti­va­tion is in­com­pat­i­ble with Chris­tian ide­als—much more in­com­pat­i­ble with the teach­ings of Je­sus.

71:6.2In eco­nomics, profit mo­ti­va­tion is to ser­vice mo­ti­va­tion what fear is to love in re­li­gion. But the profit mo­tive must not be sud­denly de­stroyed or re­moved; it keeps many oth­er­wise sloth­ful mor­tals hard at work. It is not nec­es­sary, how­ever, that this so­cial en­ergy arouser be for­ever self­ish in its ob­jec­tives.

• must not be taken away until unnecessary

71:6.3The profit mo­tive of eco­nomic ac­tiv­i­ties is al­to­gether base and wholly un­wor­thy of an ad­vanced or­der of so­ci­ety; nev­er­the­less, it is an in­dis­pens­able fac­tor through­out the ear­lier phases of civ­i­liza­tion. Profit mo­ti­va­tion must not be taken away from men un­til they have firmly pos­sessed them­selves of su­pe­rior types of non­profit mo­tives for eco­nomic striv­ing and so­cial serv­ing—the tran­scen­dent urges of su­perla­tive wis­dom, in­trigu­ing broth­er­hood, and ex­cel­lency of spir­i­tual at­tain­ment.

• being displaced in continental nation

72:5.10Two hun­dred years ago the profit mo­tive was wholly dom­i­nant in in­dus­try, but to­day it is be­ing rapidly dis­placed by other and higher driv­ing forces. Com­pe­ti­tion is keen on this con­ti­nent, but much of it has been trans­ferred from in­dus­try to play, skill, sci­en­tific achieve­ment, and in­tel­lec­tual at­tain­ment. It is most ac­tive in so­cial ser­vice and gov­ern­men­tal loy­alty. Among this peo­ple pub­lic ser­vice is rapidly be­com­ing the chief goal of am­bi­tion. The rich­est man on the con­ti­nent works six hours a day in the of­fice of his ma­chine shop and then has­tens over to the lo­cal branch of the school of states­man­ship, where he seeks to qual­ify for pub­lic ser­vice.