The Ethical Purpose of Profits

Matthew, Peter F. Drucker, in a nutshell, defines business ethics as job creation.  He uses economist Joseph F. Schumpeter, the father of the phrase “creative destruction,” to define the moral purpose of business.  Business exists to make a profit, for reinvestment of profit into better methods, training, production, etc. enables the business to keep and create jobs.  Think Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs.”  The first order of need is basic physical survival – to eat, have clothing, housing, medical care, etc.  In short, Drucker, like Schumpeter, argues that the purpose for business is to create jobs to protect life.  Drucker argues that a society can do whatever it needs to do with any institution to assure its survival.  Thus, although Drucker is “pro” business, he is really “pro” society, the survival, health of its members – not at slave, subsistence level.  He is my ethical hero, for he echoes Plato’s classic definition of ethics:  Behaviors that do not harm others or ourselves.  Note his focus on behavior.  He stresses what we do, not what we say, as the measure of ethical conduct.  Moreover, Plato underscores harm – physical pain or death – to others or ourselves.  He completely negates the idea of ethical relativism, the idea that there is no universal basis for ethics.  Wrong.  Simple human biology is the measure.  Unless diseased, all biological creatures avoid pain and death.  That is universal.  We want to live.  Drucker restates and updates Plato with  his emphasis on the first order of business always is human survival; business and the jobs it creates must serve this single purpose.  Profit is simply a means to the survival of humans.  Profits are not an absolute end in themselves.  They are tools, and if they are not reinvested in job creation to support human, society’s survival, they are economic terrorism against the society.  In short, profits are not an end in themselves.  They are means, not ends.  Moreover, the ends are specific – human survival at a decent, fair level of existence.  In the USA, we have witnessed the looting of profits for “casino” speculation – not job creation.  Persons who do this are enemies of the society, and the society can do whatever it needs to do to remove them as threats, including firing squads.  Taking profits for stock market speculation is a direct attack on human life, for it creates no jobs that produce food, housing, medical care, etc.   I am not familiar with this Murphy you mention.  Friedman, of course, speaks of the value of markets, property, sound currency, etc.  They are reasonable.  However, as Drucker and Plato argue, such mechanisms, arrangements, constructs must preserve human life, dignity.  It is easy for me to side with Drucker, for he values human life above all other considerations.  Amen.  This is consonant with my Faith, and, although I believe in efficiency and using profits to measure it, I believe profits in the final analysis exist to protect human life.