Replies to post #4814 on Distributed Digital Property Board

[aleajactaest]

Hi goin fishn,
Profits are almost by definition the crystallisation of social benefits. Net income is calculated roughly as the surplus in excess of the raw materials costs, labour and amortisation of equipment. What's left is the value a company has added to its product, and for which the consuming members of a society deem it is worth paying the company.

Governments tend to seize some of the surplus in the form of taxation, which they redeploy for their own purposes. And some would argue that traditional accounting fails to admit the externalities corporate activity sometimes generates. But in theory at least, and all things equal, I think profit is a useable measure of social benefit.

So I'm not sure you can compare and contrast the benefits and the profit motives in the way you do here. They are pretty much elements of the same thing.

"While corporations provide benefit, they are also based soley on profit motives."