Abstract
Our attitudes towards the profit-motive are more vexed than might at first appear. On the one hand, we typically deem profit-seeking socially desirable, even necessary. We appreciate the plethora of commodities that markets, fuelled by the profit-motive, produce and, like Adam Smith, are well aware that it is not from the benevolence of the butcher or the baker that we expect to find bread or meat upon our table.
There are not many of us who remain sober when we have the opportunity to grow wealthy, or prefer measure to abundance. The great multitude of men are of a completely contrary temper — what they desire they desire out o f all measure — when they have the option o f making a reasonable one they prefer to make an exorbitant one.
Plato, The Laws, Bk. XI, 918d–918e
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Notes
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As H. Grotius wrote in The Law of War and Peace (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), ‘Acts are of a mixed character, either in their essential elements or through the association of another act. Thus [for instance] if I knowingly buy a thing at a price higher than it is worth, and give the excess in price to the seller, the act will be partly gift, partly purchase’ (p. 346). It requires drawing distinctions within the marketplace to generate varieties of profit-motives.
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Interestingly Keynes used a similar argument, but in his case it involved banana-farmers. See J.M. Keynes, A Treatise on Money, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1930), p. 176.
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J.J. Mansbridge notes: ‘This is a sustained argument in favour of the idea that people often take account of both other individuals’ interest and the com-mon good when they decide what constitutes a “benefit” that they want to maximize’, Introduction to J.J. Mansbridge (ed.), Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. x.
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G. Trease, The Condottieri: Soldiers of Fortune (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 150. Another mercenary from the period, Federigo, once claimed that ‘[K]eeping faith is better still and worth more than all the gold in the world’ (Trease, The Condottieri, p. 317).
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Walsh, A., Lynch, T. (2008). The Profit-Motive and Morality. In: The Morality of Money. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230227804_3
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