The Organization of Modern Business
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV WHAT IS A FAIR PBOFIT? No question at all exists as to what is an unfair profit. An unfair profit is the profit which the other fellow makes. The profit which you make cannot be unfair?and you will explain exactly why it is not unfair as long as any one will listen. In fact, if you are allowed to talk long enough, you will make out a case against yourself even if none in the first place existed. But what is a fair profit? And who should determine the profit? Are we really talking about profit or about price? Does a high price mean a high profit, and does a low price mean a low profit? Is there any connection at all between price and profit? Does the buyer or the seller make the price, or , is the price made by an outside force over [which neither has any control? An endless number of questions a
...rise when one starts to talk about prices and profits. We get into the same morass of trouble as when wetalk of wages being high or low without reference to what is being given in return for the wages. And usually when prices and profits are common topics of conversation we have the complications of currency inflation, and on top of that the problem of scarcity which resolves itself more or less into a discussion of what a crust of bread is worth to a millionaire who is starving. The word "profiteer" is a glib and ready one that springs easily from the lips whenever we think we have been overcharged?or, what amounts to the same thing, cheated. Our resentment unconsciously leads us to take an entirely unbusinesslike view of the whole situation?a view which we would not ordinarily take. If, for instance, I sell a suit of clothes to a second-hand dealer, I shall not get what the suit is worth. I hope to get more than it is worth, but expe...
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