The Ethics of Entrepreneurship and Profit

Abstract

With every action, we aim at substituting a more favorable future state of affairs for a less favorable one that would result if we were to act differently. In this sense, with every action we seek to increase our satisfaction and attain a psychic profit. Since all of our actions display entrepreneurship and are aimed at being successful and yielding the actor a profit, there can be nothing wrong with entrepreneurship and profit.

Property must be established through acts because only through actions, taking place in time and space, can an objective – intersubjectively ascertainable – link be established between a particular person and a particular thing.

All just property, then, goes back directly or indirectly, through a chain of mutually beneficial – and thus likewise conflict-free – property-title transfers, to original appropriators and acts of original appropriation.

The capitalist’s profit indicates that he has successfully transformed socially less highly valued and appraised means of action into socially more highly valued and appraised ones and thus increased and enhanced social welfare.