you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]unUSEFULidiot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Running businesses/industries for profit allows owners to reinvest in better capital goods.

Every single business is trying to compete with every other business in a free market. When profit is made, businesses do not just sit on it and/or hand it over to the CEO. They would be foolish to do so, as the company/business which elects to purchase better machines will be able to cut their manufacturing costs and pass those savings along to the customer/consumer. This in turn allows them to out compete the business which sat on the profits or gave them out to the CEO/share holders/whatever.

Profit in healthcare allows better medicine and techniques to be developed.

Profit in prison can be monetized along the lines of rehabilitation, since there is no motive to bar people from producing economic value.

Profit in education allows for the best teaching techniques to become popularized and new/innovative teaching practices to be rewarded.

The government is balls deep in all of these industries in terms of the way they are regulated and subsidized by taxpayers.