An Economy Based on Profit-Maximizing Companies is Unsustainable and Bad for the Common Man

Rebuttals: A capitalist system is defined by private rather than state ownership. Obviously this does not enforce a profit-maximizing model to be had on all companies, as non-profits are also under this capitalist system. Regulations DO NOT make a system socialist in any way as socialism is defined as industries owned and operated by the state, regulations can be a way affect the free market and change the industry to adapt to external factors, like pollution. The epipen technique was to profit maximize using a monopoly. The cost of the liquid inside the pen is about 1 dollar, and a 600 dollar price provides a HUGE profit margin. Why else could the CEO rack in 25.82 million in 2014? They claim that the company's profit was a mere 50 dollars on each pen, but this is largely due to the company not counting salaries, like that of the CEO, inside their profit statistic. The AIDS medication guy, Martin Shkreli- "Very good," he wrote to the chairman of the company's board. "Nice work as usual. $1bn here we come." This is the decision of a man who sought and found profit through a sort of monopoly. You tell me, is this good for average Joe? Is this needs-based or profit-maximization? http://www.fiercepharma.com... http://www.bloomberg.com... https://consumerist.com... http://money.cnn.com... A quick last point on this, yes there may be generic medications being released that cut the costs significantly. However, the deals worked out with insurance and health care companies often prevent this medication from becoming the one that is offered/your insurance pay for. Eventually, generics will level the price. But there is still the time that they are not able to do so that prevents people from receiving the medication they need at a fair cost. There is also the issue of a monopoly being a huge contributing factor to the unfairness of the cost of a good as well as the best way to maximize profits. Though we may have anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, these are lax in this country, and we basically grant temporary monopolies to pharma companies with each prescription development. This encourages a system where the companies are looking for more drugs to prescribe/pump into each person and this affects the health care provided. We made a system where for each symptom there's a pill to take rather than a system where we encourage treatments and health regimens, why? Because there's more profit to be found. In perfect competition we find companies lower prices to compete with the others, helping the consumer, but we both know there is not perfect competition in too many industries. "How do you think American businesses had the money to set up in others nations to begin with? If they were not economically superior prior that point then how did they get to that point? It takes a lot of money to set up a business in a foreign country." Economic superiority is but another superiority complex in the minds of the US industrialists, politicians, and many of its people. Money is useless, don't you see? The real value is the resource, that is what is extracted from these nations! It takes a lot of money, perhaps, but it doesn't take much to travel to Africa on a slave ship and sell slaves in the Caribbean, for a profit of course. In response to your Henry Ford argument, he also had groves in Brazil to extract rubber from trees. The temperatures and humidity would be intolerable, natives were used to working partly in the morning and partly in the evening. Mister Ford thought these natives were lazy slobs, so disputes, violence, riots, and a lot of secrecy occurred there. I wonder what exactly happened to those average native Joes? https://www.thehenryford.org... Profit maximization cuts corners and seeks to bring the value of their portfolio to the highest it can be. Don't tell me that sustainable investment and benevolent business practices are a part of them main corporations and businesses of the US, because plain and simply they are not. If they were, we would see higher standards of living than what we have now, higher LIVABLE wages, higher youth employment, less ecological impact of businesses, more attention to the needs of the people and natives of other countries, and on and on and non. NO. It is the value of the executives' portfolios that matter to the companies, and they can survive not paying a worker an extra dollar if they feel they personally do not have to. Closing Statement: By all means, companies need to make a profit. But the idea of profit-maximization, that we can find the highest point and just keep everything there, raking in money out of the nipples of society, is not sustainable. They run dry. Money is not particularly unlimited without rising inflation, another thing that average Joe is hurt by when he tries to save his money. Where does the new money go? It ends up collecting at the "top" of society in this unequal distribution of wealth where it stays. Joe makes his 10/hr and it stays there for 10+ years until the minimum wage goes up. Food, medicine, water, shelter, mental health, liberty, pursuit of happiness, social programs. These all are important to the individual lives of society, and hell, they're not to a portfolio of a company. The highest and most important pursuit is the capital gain, and this is found in providing the lowest wages that people will work, providing the minimal food they can live off, the smallest and shabbiest housing they can sleep in, damned be your mental health, liberty and social programs. Profit maximization takes the humanity out of a business and replaces it with numbers.