Using the definition of profit as the difference between the Price a
Consumer pays to
buy an Object and the
Costs the Owners of the Sources paid for that production:
Profit == Object_Consumer_Price - Source_Owner_Costs
Notice Profit is 'undefined' when the Object Consumer is simultaneously
the Source Owner because the Owner of Sources is the Owner of Objects
automatically - as a sort of "side effect" of his owning the Sources.
For example: If you own an apple tree, you must pay for all the costs
to install, water, prune and harvest and any Wages to any workers you
hire. But you can't pay Profit because you don't sell the fruit to
yourself - you *already* own it.
Does this mean the origin of profit is the Consumers' lack of Ownership
in the Sources of Production?
asked by Patrick Anderson
Alternative proposals, that emerged from last endorsing round
The different proposals do not represent the best proposals, nor the more popular.
Strictly speaking they are the pareto front of the set of proposals.
You can think of it as the smallest set of proposals such that every participant is represented.
Proposal
Profit, given the definition intended by the questioner, is a direct measure of the amount of distrust in one's fellow man and/or the world-at-large. In other words, it is a measure of pessimism, otherwise the market naturally shifts to a gift and barter economy--much like a natural ecosystem.
One doesn't try to profit from family members, extend that to the global village and you have proof by induction.
Endorsed by:
dreamer 
View Full TextProposal Abstract
The question is very unclear and should be reformulated/made more concrete. Especially the difference between accounting profit/cost, psychic profit/cost should be taken into account when reformulating.
Proposal
All valuations are subjective and voluntary trade is beneficial. That is to say, when trading a produced good for money or from the other side of the trade, trading money for a consumer good, each party is gaining a psychic profit, as they subjectively value less what they are giving than what they are receiving. In this sense, both *profit* from the trade, otherwise why would they engage in it?
The question starts out with an equation and implies it is about accounting. But through complication of the *nominal money profit* in the equation with some abstract undefined term *profit*, of which the *origin* is to be determined, it becomes fairly meaningless. The only meaningful interpretation I can gather is: "Why do we only do interpersonal and not personal accounting?" or "Why don't individuals assign money valuations to each individual piece of their property and labor, so as to determine on a personal scale what their cost and profit is?".
A cynical interpretation of the question would be that it is trying to find a justification for communal ownership of the means of production and will engage in any amount of confusion of language and concepts in order to achieve this goal; i.e. a good example of newspeak.
Endorsed by:
battocchia mbarkhau Generation 3: Phase: Writing New Proposals
What should you do now? Write new proposals. How?
You can insert brand new ideas;
rewrite previous ideas (maybe trying to explain them better);
recover old ideas from the history of the question;
try to write a proposal that represent an acceptable compromise between different winning proposals. If you do this well, the new proposal will be endorsed by both the proponent of the first and of the second proposal, and you will have effectively joined those proposals.
Number of authors of new proposals: 0
Number of proposals written so far: 2
Propose an answer
Note: Proposals can be of any length and may include an abstract of up to 500 characters in length if you wish. When proposals are listed at the voting stage the abstract will be displayed if one exists, otherwise the full proposal will be displayed. For proposals longer than 1000 characters the abstract is mandatory.
Time since first proposal on this generation: 87 days, 13 hours and 23 minutes.
NOTE: 1 days must have passed between the first proposal and the moment when the questioner can move the question on.
View History of The Question. Here you can see who voted for what, what proposals were eliminated. You can recover past proposals that you think should not be lost. Maybe explaining them better.
