The Pursuit Of Profit
by P Atkinson (2/2/2012)

The pursuit of profit is the attempt to acquire as much of other people's money as possible for the minimum outlay of time, money and energy. This is to set out to swindle the community for as much as the law allows.

Must Impoverish The Community
It can only impoverish the community as quality and service to the public are eroded to the minimum possible while the cost to the public is raised to the maximum obtainable.

Inspired by Contempt for Others
To adopt such an attitude is to reveal contempt for the community, which is abundantly demonstrated by the actions of businesses today:

• The Pharmaceutical Industry has abandoned the development of life-saving antibiotics as unprofitable.
• Banks who invent new charges as they reduce staff, imitated by the telephone company Telstra who also fines customers who do not promptly pay their accounts while levying an extra charge upon customers who pay their account by credit cards;
• Television broadcasters who insist upon using improvements in technology to uphold the monopoly that allows them to compel the viewing of adverts as well as dictate the time of public events like football grand finals, to suit their own, not public convenience or tradition;
• Newspaper publisher, Mr David Fagan, who decided (January 2007) it would be convenient for his newspaper to save money in freight by supplying only part of the Saturday edition of the Courier-Mail to many country areas, without any reduction in the price of the paper in these areas.

Self Defeating
The fact that these actions are impoverishing their own community is ignored by the executives of these corporations, for they only measure their achievements by how much money they accumulate; they are blind to their complete dependence on the community they are destroying. The self-defeating nature of profit seeking is further explained by John Ruskin in "Unto This Last".