>If you are saying that the profit motive does not provide an incentive to maximize quality at the expense of everything else, including profits, of course. But optuimaztion is good enough to provide tremendous improvements in quality, and thus profit is an incentive to make good stuff at cheaper prices than your competitors. As Detroit has found to its sorry and cost.
Profit is not an incentive to make good stuff at cheaper costs though (unless this is the only way to secure much larger sales.) It is competition that does that. Competition reduces profit margins, reducing input costs can be a temporary fix. Reducing quality is the most obvious way of reducing input costs (aside from reducing labour costs.)
>>I assumed that was roughly the logic behind your advocacy for a market economy with no profit system? Keep the market competition, dispense with the profit motive.
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>No. There is no market system without the profit motive. What I would dispense with is private property. There would be profits retained by the workers, if their firms made any profits.
I see, so instead of private property, the surplus value would accumulate as collectively-owned property of workers? I assume this system would only apply to the means of production though, not personal property?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas