[onlooker]

I define "fair share", by whatever society/the tax code deems it to be. My larger point being that corporations are notorious for trying to evade paying taxes and the biggest ones seem routinely to get away with it as per my original post. Oh and Cog you do not need to dumb down anything maybe smart up would be better.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')In the business world, there is this thing called competition. Over time, that constrains profits (i.e. keeps them "in check", to use your words. Funny how the left hates profits so much, yet LOVES taxing them all they can).

1). I never said anything about unlimited profit.

2). I never said anything about unlimited demand.

3). Quantum physics has no place in this discussion, and you seem indecisive about that anyway.

4). Why all the straw men? Because you don't have a meaningful argument? All I said is that businesses primarily exist to make a profit. Just because, as you imply, you don't like profits -- that doesn't change the reality.

5). Finally, shifting of supply and demand curves and all the micro-economics 101 terms you care to throw out like "marginal utility" (yeah, I had micro-econ in college) have NO bearing on the fundamental point about businesses existing to make profits.

[Cog]

You are wrong again.

I engage in business to make money(profit). Tomorrow I could buy I-Phones at full cost and sell them for half of what I paid for them. I would do a booming business until I went broke but according to your theory, I went into business simply to sell something. No, No, No.

Thank God you aren't in charge of a business. Your Marxist theory of why people form a business is giving me a headache that only a beer can cure.

Please do yourself a favor and take a few business classes at the local community college. You are embarrassing yourself here.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')In the business world, there is this thing called competition. Over time, that constrains profits (i.e. keeps them "in check", to use your words. Funny how the left hates profits so much, yet LOVES taxing them all they can).

1). I never said anything about unlimited profit.

2). I never said anything about unlimited demand.

3). Quantum physics has no place in this discussion, and you seem indecisive about that anyway.

4). Why all the straw men? Because you don't have a meaningful argument? All I said is that businesses primarily exist to make a profit. Just because, as you imply, you don't like profits -- that doesn't change the reality.

5). Finally, shifting of supply and demand curves and all the micro-economics 101 terms you care to throw out like "marginal utility" (yeah, I had micro-econ in college) have NO bearing on the fundamental point about businesses existing to make profits.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'Y')ou are wrong again.

I engage in business to make money(profit). Tomorrow I could buy I-Phones at full cost and sell them for half of what I paid for them. I would do a booming business until I went broke but according to your theory, I went into business simply to sell something. No, No, No.

Thank God you aren't in charge of a business. Your Marxist theory of why people form a business is giving me a headache that only a beer can cure.

Please do yourself a favor and take a few business classes at the local community college. You are embarrassing yourself here.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'Y')ou are wrong again.

I engage in business to make money(profit). Tomorrow I could buy I-Phones at full cost and sell them for half of what I paid for them. I would do a booming business until I went broke but according to your theory, I went into business simply to sell something. No, No, No.

Thank God you aren't in charge of a business. Your Marxist theory of why people form a business is giving me a headache that only a beer can cure.

Please do yourself a favor and take a few business classes at the local community college. You are embarrassing yourself here.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'Y')ou are wrong again.

I engage in business to make money(profit). Tomorrow I could buy I-Phones at full cost and sell them for half of what I paid for them. I would do a booming business until I went broke but according to your theory, I went into business simply to sell something. No, No, No.

Thank God you aren't in charge of a business. Your Marxist theory of why people form a business is giving me a headache that only a beer can cure.

Please do yourself a favor and take a few business classes at the local community college. You are embarrassing yourself here.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'Y')ou are wrong again.

I engage in business to make money(profit). Tomorrow I could buy I-Phones at full cost and sell them for half of what I paid for them. I would do a booming business until I went broke but according to your theory, I went into business simply to sell something. No, No, No.

Thank God you aren't in charge of a business. Your Marxist theory of why people form a business is giving me a headache that only a beer can cure.

Please do yourself a favor and take a few business classes at the local community college. You are embarrassing yourself here.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'Y')ou are wrong again.

I engage in business to make money(profit). Tomorrow I could buy I-Phones at full cost and sell them for half of what I paid for them. I would do a booming business until I went broke but according to your theory, I went into business simply to sell something. No, No, No.

Thank God you aren't in charge of a business. Your Marxist theory of why people form a business is giving me a headache that only a beer can cure.

Please do yourself a favor and take a few business classes at the local community college. You are embarrassing yourself here.

[evilgenius]

Not at all. I began by making a point that I think you misinterpreted. It is not that profit is not part of going into business, but that you won't succeed in business unless you understand what the nature of the business that you attempt is. By understanding that nature you will gain power over the peculiarities of that business because all of those peculiarities relate to that nature and don't revolve around greed. You, as a business owner, are the one who gets to decide how much greed comes into the equation. You can decide that greed exists for you to the exclusion of the reasons why you went into business, but you do that at your long term peril. That's about the only thing I think that has kept me droning on.

[evilgenius]

I took some time to think about this issue. I wondered why it was that when I mentioned purpose over profit, not saying explicitly that profit is not part of business because that wasn't what I meant, that there was such an outcry. I think it comes down to this, that you can really see this two different ways. Like a Neeker cube, or that woman who is either an old crone or a beautiful young woman depending upon how you choose to perceive her, you can see business and profit two different ways.

The first way is the Darwinian way. If it makes a profit it succeeds. If it doesn't, then you jettison it. There is a whole branch of behavioral psychology that thinks this is what people do with everything. This branch of psychology doesn't believe that human beings have free will. It maintains that the individual is a construct of the world that contains them. If you think about it, if you make all business decisions based upon whether they are going to turn a profit that is what you are doing. You aren't pursuing business because you had some dream, but because you wanted to make money. By seizing upon the situations where people are obligated, by hook or by crook, to pay a certain price for a certain thing and finding a way to provide that thing for less cost to you than what you can get paid to provide it you can do that. By conforming to the things that worked you could do that. You won't create anything new, but you will most likely succeed.

The other way is the way of the dreamer. Under this way you go into business because you figure out what it is you want to do and try to make that work, turn a profit. The profit is the sign of success, but it is not why you go into business. You go into business to do your dream. If enough people need or want what you have gone into business to do, and you manage it right, you may turn a profit. Managing it right is about applying ethics, in this case telling the truth, using consistent and generally accepted weights and measures and all of the other things that involve your use of free will. It doesn't guarantee success, but you didn't go into business necessarily for that reason. By convincing people to buy from you and finding various ways to control your costs according to your use of free will you might turn a profit. You might create something new, and then again you might just fail.

Probably no real business is 100% one way or the other.

Incidentally, to tie this back into taxes and taxing attitudes, the government, always being a construct of the will of the people and therefore lacking free will of its own, always falls into the first camp. It is the law which we use to capture what we discover at various times when we engage ourselves in finding new things. The government either carries out the law, or it doesn't. We, in our understanding of what we once discovered, have to hold it accountable to carry out the law, or not.