The Difference Between the Event Profit and the Pursuit of Profit

On more than one occasion, I have said that profit is an event, a happening. I have also said that people acquire profit by producing the goods and services the community wants. I refer to this acquiring process as the pursuit of profit.

When people pursue profit, they get involved in two kinds of behavior. First, they try to produce a product or a service (which is behavior/action). Second, they try to generate revenues by selling their product or service (which is behavior/action). There is no other kind of business activity. Businesspeople are involved in sales activities and/or production activities. There are no profit activities.

At the end of the month, the quarter, the year, all of this sales and production activity leads to an event or happening. That event or happening is profit and profit can only be equal to, greater than, or less than opportunity cost. It cannot be anything else.

These sales and production activities, which are human activities, can be good, bad, reasonable, unreasonable, legal, illegal, or any other descriptive label you want to put on them. But the result of this activity, irrespective of the kind of behavior involved, is profit. Profit is not a human activity. The pursuit of profit is a human activity. Again, profit cannot be good or bad. Only the behavior involved in the pursuit of profit can be good or bad.