Not since the XX century. What you've said is what we believed in the past. I mean: economy evolves all the time. There are different approaches, or philosophies which clash all the time.
There was a philosophy that assumed companies are there to provide goods. There was a philosophy that assumed profit is immoral. And so on.
Today we believe a company is meant to make a profit. This is what shareholders expect. This is also what the government expects. Profit is the driver, making a product someone needs is a way of getting the profit.
Profit describes the ultimate target of business activity and balances all other aspects (like boosting sales and cutting costs).
If you think financial industry produces nothing, you clearly don't understand economy very well. And the products of this industry in particular. But this is not a place and I won't go further unless asked (an I can give simple examples that prove you're wrong).
So you're a believer in Milton Friedman's school of economics - good to know, I guess. You're right that this is the dominant ideology in the US (and by extension also most companies doing extensive trade with/in the US), but that doesn't mean it's actually sound thinking or policy. Recent history demonstrates quite clearly how short-sighted and destructive this thinking is, as this thinking has only in the past couple of decades fully taken hold of law and business, and has subsequently fostered extreme monopolization, predatory business practices where companies are bought, stripped for assets, and then sold or bankrupted for profit, dramatically increased hoarding of wealth among the already super-rich, further impoverishment of the already poor, stymied class mobility, and caused a financial collapse - soon to be two, if financial analysts are to be believed - by allowing the financial industry to play fast and loose with other people's money through massive deregulation. If you want an example, look into the causes of the downfall of Sears. It ain't pretty, and it's all down to neoliberalist thinking and Friedmanian economics.
The short of it: people are fully capable of believing horribly harmful and bad things, and the idea that business exists to "produce profit" is one of these ideas, particularly when taken as literally as it is in current US law. There is no "balancing" of "aspects" when the
only motive for shareholders is maximising short-term profits - and stockholders are almost universally in it for the short term, as that's how you make a profit in the stock market. As for the financial industry, they provide two valuable services: loans and safe handling of people's money. Other than that - and the vast majority of their business - they're mainly looking to find ever-increasingly complex ways to bet, gamble, sell and lend other people's money to other people with the same interests with the ultimate goal of creating more money than there was in the first place, which is where the fictionalization of value comes into play. But you're right - this isn't the place, but feel free to DM me if you like.
I know the difference and profit can only be derived from revenue - Without revenue you can't have profit.
Speaking of shareholders, They don't contribute anything to the process, only the $$ to do it with.
However profit is the reason because it's already understood that costs paid out to do business comes from revenue itself - Doing it all at cost is pointless, you must have profit on top of your revenue for it to be worth doing.
Cost and all else doesn't matter, flatly covering all the bills for the enterprise alone just won't cut it, you have to make a little on top.
Honestly - We may have different ways of viewing it and that's OK, I don't expect everyone to agree with me on everything, that in itself would be foolish.
Absolutely agree on that - healthy and civilized discussion is how we all learn and grow
I have to point out one key disagreement, though (sorry, but I have to!): doing it all at cost is not pointless at all, as "at cost" obviously wages for every single person employed in the company. In other words, everyone actually involved in the labor of producing the product
is being rewarded if a business is run at cost. It also includes paying off loans (i.e. external financing) and agreed-upon returns on direct investments in the company (but not shareholder payouts, which are AFAIK based on profits, partially due to most shareholders not actually having ever invested money in the company, just traded other shareholders money for stocks), so even those "behind the scenes" are rewarded fairly if a business runs at cost. This is of course complicated by the need to save up for future R&D and similar long-term/future investments, but in general, a business run "at cost" can do just fine - the main problem today is that running "at cost" would cause your shareholders to freak out and flee en masse, causing stock prices to plummet and the "value" of your company to be dramatically diminished, despite
nothing actually changing. This is the nature of capitalism being based on the logical fallacy of eternal growth - that if growth stops, people panic. But again, as above - I agree this isn't the place, though it's absolutely an interesting discussion
Why not, people know of the core (i) series & then when you ask them about Zen or AMD they go
It's like the time when Apple was the only smartphone maker in town, except in the PC world time has stagnated virtually for a decade - in part due to AMD's own incompetence!
Then you go explaining to people what's a GPU & some of the reactions are
This is definitely a point - Intel has a massive mindshare advantage, for a whole host of reasons. Part of it is Intel's long-term performance dominance (and AMD's failed gamble with the heavy machinery architecture series), partly it's due to establishing themselves as a dominant market actor through illegal business practices, partly it's because of people generally not giving enough of a damn about the components that make up their "boxes". Who among us knows who made the ABS system in our cars, as long as they work? The issue is that AMD has a (rather sticky) reputation as "the cheap brand" or possibly "the slow but cheap brand", the latter of which isn't true any more, but that doesn't really matter when they start off at a (large) disadvantage - and Intel knows to capitalize on this in a whole host of ways. Intel's massive cash hoard and advertising subsidies to OEMs don't exactly hurt them either. And if people believe (whether it's true or not) that Intel is the only high-performance alternative, they'll pay and/or wait for the opportunity to buy Intel unless they're thoroughly convinced otherwise - which isn't easy.
, I'm not part of Intel or the CEO of any company to even worry about it all.
