Look at Benefits, Not Just Profits, To Understand Justice
In every voluntary exchange both the buyer and the seller benefit.
The price paid is never above what someone is willing to pay, it is always less than what a person is willing to pay. The difference is benefit to the buyer, not measured in monetary terms, but in terms of personal satisfaction. Personal satisfaction is not measurable. It is subjectively derived.
Similarly, the seller never sells for the minimum willingness to sell, for zero profits, but always for some amount greater than the minimum willingness to sell, those are profits. These are measurable because sellers have explicit costs, as compared to buyers' subjectivity.
So, we can easily see and measure the profits of sellers, but we cannot see the benefits to buyers.
However, in most markets, where there is active competition among sellers (including labor markets) the buyer captures far more benefit than the seller does profit.
So, my take (hot or not) is that the profits captured by the wealthy reflect even greater benefits to consumers, of all income levels. Sellers who earn great profits ought to be applauded for making things that people want at prices people can afford.
This only gets ugly, there is only an injustice, when profits are earned by monopoly firms, who don't face competition. The typical way a firm avoids competition is by capturing a privilege from some sort of government entity that blocks any chance of entry into the market by potential competitors.
We should measure justice or injustice not by which direction money wealth flows, by by which direction benefits, in the opinion of the people involved, flows. And corporations generate massive benefits to people.
The price paid is never above what someone is willing to pay, it is always less than what a person is willing to pay. The difference is benefit to the buyer, not measured in monetary terms, but in terms of personal satisfaction. Personal satisfaction is not measurable. It is subjectively derived.
Similarly, the seller never sells for the minimum willingness to sell, for zero profits, but always for some amount greater than the minimum willingness to sell, those are profits. These are measurable because sellers have explicit costs, as compared to buyers' subjectivity.
So, we can easily see and measure the profits of sellers, but we cannot see the benefits to buyers.
However, in most markets, where there is active competition among sellers (including labor markets) the buyer captures far more benefit than the seller does profit.
So, my take (hot or not) is that the profits captured by the wealthy reflect even greater benefits to consumers, of all income levels. Sellers who earn great profits ought to be applauded for making things that people want at prices people can afford.
This only gets ugly, there is only an injustice, when profits are earned by monopoly firms, who don't face competition. The typical way a firm avoids competition is by capturing a privilege from some sort of government entity that blocks any chance of entry into the market by potential competitors.
We should measure justice or injustice not by which direction money wealth flows, by by which direction benefits, in the opinion of the people involved, flows. And corporations generate massive benefits to people.
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