Like at some point won’t all of the profit be squeezed out of society?
This article explores that. The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth
Yes. It’s when the workers are driven to the point that they cannot do enough reproductive labor and/or they revolt.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
Once one person has all the power, they de facto have all the wealth. Slaves don’t own anything.
absolute or percentage wise. in absolute terms all of the universe. in percent terms nope because like gambling allows for infinite profit. ie guaranteed profit on rolls that will most times not result in any loss.
There’s a limit with any particular set of tools and labor, but a universal limit doesn’t exist, no. Profit comes when you take money and use it in a more productive way than letting it sit under your mattress, and there’s no theoretical limit on productivity.
No. Or at least not while inflation exists.
Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall
No, let me know if you find one though
Technically, money is just a number on a ledger. Practically, there’s a finite amount of wealth in the solar system, much less on earth, significantly less accessible to humans and only a slim amount can be taken from the working class before people start starving. We already have little enough that the population is going to start contracting.
