[P2P-F] The Origin of Profit and the Purpose of Production

Fri Feb 3 23:11:48 CET 2012

Carsten Foertsch at
http://DeskMag.com/en/how-profitable-are-coworking-spaces-177 writes:

> Everyone should earn a profit for their work

Profit is never the result of work!

Profit is the difference between the Consumer_Price and Owner_Costs.

Wages are paid for work.  Wages are a *cost* of production.

Owners receive profit when the charge consumers more than the actual
costs of production (where wages are one of those costs).

Profit measures the consumer's lack of Ownership in the Means of
Production, and falls to 0 (actually is *undefined*) when the
consumers co-own the Means of Production and accept the outputs of
that production (the product itself) as their return for those
investments.

This variant of Wikipedia.org/wiki/Imputed_rent is a short-circuit
across the market that *eliminates* the final transaction and so there
is no sale and no chance for profit and even no chance for taxation!

Under this model, each consumer owns the same % of the product as they
co-own the Means of that product - even before it is produced (you
might say they each the own the entire potential of those productive
assets).

For example, each co-owner of a milk dairy must pay all the costs of
production (including wages), but would then just come to collect
their portion of the milk that they *already* own.

Of course the owners of a productive asset do not buy the outputs, but
we don't usually think of the consumers co-owning for Use Value, and
so we believe buying products and paying profit are necessities.

But buying products and paying profit are NOT necessities, and can
easily be proven by considering neither occurs when the Consumer owns
the Means and uses some of those products directly.

During Imputed Production, the co-owners are also the Consumers of
those products in intend to own exactly the amount needed to achieve
the production required for the products they want.

Owners who use the product directly must still pay all the Costs of
Production, including any Wages, but CANNOT pay Profit - for who would
they pay it to?

So to say Profit is a necessity is to be very confused about the
orginal purpose of Production.

Production should be for Use Value, not for Exchange Value.  This is
guaranteed when the Consumers co-own the Means of Production for the
purpose of using those products themselves.