These left wing loons are wrong. The problem is not profit. Profit simply means that one got more out of a resource than put in. The farmer made a profit on the tomatoes because he created something from land, dirt and water that the market found to be of value.
Personally, I believe that there is a moral imperative to profit. If we invest a resource, then the thing created from the investment should be more valuable than the resource invested. If you cut down a tree, then thing created from the wood should be more valuable than the tree.
If we tear down Arches National Park, then the thing we create should be more valuable than Arches National Park.
What can be more valuable than this preserved land.
Nothing.
We profit by the preservation of our natural heritage.
Enough stuff is in production to last the world for several generations. The last remaining undeveloped areas on this planet have such intrinsic value that we should only seek to develop them in extraordinary circumstances.
We all perceive life from different perspectives and develop a different sense of values. Naturally, there is a clash of values.
This clash of values keeps the market dynamic. Utah is filled with buffoons who would gladly trade our natural heritage for a weekend in Vegas. People who value our natural heritage must be vigilant and stand against wanton destruction.
BTW, there used to be "conservatives" who were interested in conserving our natural heritage. There still may be some, but idiots like Sean Hannity keep shouting them under the table. Conservatives interested in conserving our natural heritage rarely surface these days. Conservatism is now just loud-mouth Limbaugh wannabes who attack conservation at every turn.
But profit means that we get more out of an investment than we put in. The last remaining open spaces on this planet are so valuable that we should only develop them in cases of extreme need.
A lot of intellectuals hate a thing called "money."
Money is simply a tool that we use to value time and resources. When a society has an honest monetary system and accurate forms of accounting, then people can use money to help guide the important decisions in their life.
When money accurately reflects our values (which is most often the case) then money can help us make important life decisions.
Of course money is just an abstraction. There are cases when money does not accurately reflect our values.
Even worse, it is possible to create an economic system that systematically undercuts the values of the people. From the ancients to this modern age, the ruling class has sought to use the financial system to manipulate the people.
For example, In 1774 Edmund Burke, the patron saint of Conservatism, lauded the use of crony capitalism to control the people in his famous speech to repeal the tea duty.
Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it.... Do not burthen them with taxes.... But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question....
Edmund Burke, and all the cronies who wave Burke as the father of Conservatism, advocate using the subtle manipulation of trade and the financial system to control people in lieu of open taxation.
(BTW, may "conservatives" trace conservatism to the English Statesman Edmund Burke and not to the US Founders who many intellectual conservatives detest as "liberal").
The political manipulation of trade and finances is not unique to conservatives. A Young Hegelian named Karl Marx spent the bulk of his life writing a tome called Das Kapital.
Marx, a devote follower of Hegel, was trying to establish a thesis/anti-thesis conflict that would erupt in a new social revolution.
Das Kapital is detailed exposition on the ways that the ruling class can manipulate trade and the financial system to their advantage.
Right wing conservatives love the use of financial manipulation to control the people. Conservatives took to defending Marx's perversion of the free market creating the great historical irony that Karl Marx, not Adam Smith, is the father of modern capitalism.
The best way to understand the modern Left/Right Split is to realize that Hegel was a right wing conservative. Hegel's goal was to frame the monarchy as progressive and liberal. To do so, he created a new modern logic (often called dialectics). Hegelian dialectics uses paradox at its foundation and conflict on its surface. Hegel's two great works were a philosophy of logic which rejected the foundations of classical logic. He created a philosophy of history claiming that history evolved through nationalistic conflict. Hegel adored the concept of "sublation." Sublation is a process in which words take on different (often contradictory meanings) in usage. Hegel was particularly interested in the sublation of terms related to "freedom." Hegel loved to show that freedom was slavery and slavery freedom. With Hegelian Dialectics led to a sublation of the term "liberal."
Classical Liberals, such as the US Founders, had a completely different set of ideas about liberty than modern liberals who promote a sublated version of the term "liberal."
The ultimate expression of the Hegelian Right is Fascism. The ultimate expression of the Hegelian Left is Communism. The fate of the people under both systems is dismal. There is little difference because the two sides of the coin are made of the same medal.
Personally, I believe that the United States is an inherently liberal nation and that we should spend our time concentrating on the difference between classical liberalism (the US Founders, etc.) and Modern Liberalism. I see the primary difference between classical and modern liberalism as the logic foundations of the two methods. Modern Liberals use a sublated use of the term "liberty."
But, I was talking about money and profit.
In the classical liberal sense, money is simply a tool that we can use in weighing the value of items. This view of money is very clear in the Coinage Act of 1792 which set the value of a dollar as a weight of silver. The hope was to create an honest money to avoid the manipulation of money that had taken place in Europe.
The founders believed that, if we had an honest monetary system and accurate accounting, that there was a better chance of engaging in honest economic activity.
When there is an honest monetary system and honest money in play, money becomes a better reflection of our actual value.
Money, of course, is never perfect. Money is a tool. As a society we have to be vigilant to see that the tools are used correctly. A man with a hammer sees all the world as a nail. A man who sees all the world as nail will invariably smash things that ought not be smashed.
So, there is a wonderful tool called money that we can use to help us make prudent use of our valuable resources. When money is systematically misused, we should examine the circumstances and ask why.
Money is just a tool for measuring value. The most common source of the inequities in our society is the ruling class.
The ruling class, by its very nature, is seeking power over things and not the preservation or creation of value.
The ruling class promotes the idea that this inanimate object called money is the evil force behind their will to power, when, in truth, the inequities that we find in society almost always trace back to people who are seeking power over others.
The Capitalist system, as created by Karl Marx and supported by loud mouth conservatives, is an inherently captured monetary system in which business warlords called capitalists use market manipulation to gain advantage over other business warlords.
The term "profit" simply means that we got more out of the use of a resource than we put in. There is a moral imperative to profit. If we destroy a resource and don't get anything of value from the destruction, then we are engaged in wonton waste.
Money is a tool that we can use to measure value. When working properly, money can help us make important decisions about the use of our time and resources. When we see the creation of money out of sync with our values, we know that something is wrong with our economic system.
The most common source of these inequities is the ruling class which seeks control over people and not the creation of economic value.
The ruling class uses vilification of money and vilification of profit to hide their nefarious ways. The ruling class seeks power over people and not the creation of value. The ruling class tends to promote the use of money is ways that destroys value in the pursuit of power.
We see people from the arch conservative Edmund Burke to the modern progressive Barack Obama seeking to create markets that favor cronies seeking power to entrepreneurs creating value. This problem we see is inherent in the ruling class and is not inherent in money which is simply a tool. Nor is it inherent in "profit" which means getting more out of something put in. The poisonous philosophies of Modern Conservatism and Modern Progressivism are far worse for our society than either money or profit.