[p2p-research] User Freedom and the Purpose of Profit

[Kevin Carson]

On 1/13/10, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ryan Lanham wrote:
>  > I am not against profits.  But I am against profits for the sake of
>  > profits.  We simply don't understand the world yet where they don't exist in
>  > a dominant way.   It is coming fairly quickly, however.
>
>  I hope this is true, but if so, then why would anyone invest?

1) To make their own labor more efficient and reduce the amount of
effort required for a given output;

2) For the entrepreneurial profits that temporarily result from the
first-mover advantage of offering a new innovation; and

3) To be able to compete, in the long run, with other producers'
production costs.

I don't see any of these things as illegitimate.  The only things
illegitimate are artificial scarcity, and entry barriers that lock in
permanent profits for innovation against competition by later
adopters.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html