Like at some point won’t all of the profit be squeezed out of society?
In a sense yes. Once a company has captured the entire (global) economy, including banking, it would control who to give credit to, who to employ, what to pay them, what their own products are priced.
They could at most reap as “profit” what they give out in credit and payment.
There may be sub-limits for capturing entire industries.
Yes, there is a limit.
First, you need to look at the difference between 1. money and 2. value.
That theoretical one rich person (or company) might own all money printing facilities in the world, and therefore can make endless numbers. That is money, not value.
There is theoretically no limit for the money. But this is meaningless, because this kind of inflated money would be valueless.
The one rich person might own everybody else, and all their belongings, and all that they can produce.
That’s all the value then. That’s your limit.
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.
Numbers in ledgers is a description of banking but money and banking are not the same thing.
Alternatively you could be describing money management, keeping a ledger of an account. Money management is the management of money but it is not money itself.
A collection of coins or bills is worth a certain amount and when you add or remove money the amount changes but you do not need to update any accounts.
I’m making a distinction between money as a system of abstracting wealth and what wealth practically means. You’re making a highly disputable philosophical argument about the ontological nature of money instead of engaging with the germaine ideas. Simply put: I don’t consider a physical representation of money to be money in-and-of-itself; I consider each bill to be a part of a grand fragmented ledger. Furthermore, bitcoin is literally a public ledger for which there is no physical exchange of any representation of money. As a final example, the Yap isles famously have a monetary system that has physical Incarnations but no physical exchange among the people of the isles. It’s literally just a public ledger that exists in the minds of those who use it.
This article explores that. The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth
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
Once one person has all the power, they de facto have all the wealth. Slaves don’t own anything.
There’s an actual limit to profit, they are called profit margins and different industries have different profit margins.
Yes. It’s when the workers are driven to the point that they cannot do enough reproductive labor and/or they revolt.
No. They can always print more money. Money is no longer backed by anything other than faith; if people believe money has value, there’s no hard set limit on that value
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.
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.
Fucking real
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.
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.
Isnt that why there are transnational conglomerates?
Theoretically? I’d imagine it’s equal (or close) to the difference between global money supply and global money supply but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking
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.
This is a great take
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.
