Understanding Profit

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Imagine that you and two neighbours decided to make apple pies together. Carol, who grows apples and pears in her orchards, will bring the fresh apples needed. Lindsay, will bring the pie shells that she made with flour produced from her fields of grain. You, will provide the butter, milk and honey that you produced on your own farm. Altogether, including the total time and material costs that each person spent to prepare the ingredients, a single pie would cost 30 minutes. Each neighbour’s portion of the cost being equal would be just 10 minutes.

Using a time-based income system each neighbour would generate 10 minutes of income for themselves for each pie produced. The total income generated would match the value of the pies exactly. Each neighbour could use the 10 minutes of income that they created to purchase and consume one third of a pie. The economic system would be in perfect balance. The distribution of production, income and consumption would be seamless. All workers could afford to buy an amount equal to what they produced.

Now suppose a 20% profit was added to the price of the pies. Each slice now costs 12 minutes. None of the women would be able to afford the product they just created. Producing each pie only generated 10 minutes of individual income, so each woman would need to borrow another 2 minutes in imaginary promise-to-pay money in order to purchase their fair share of their own productivity. Why would anyone be willing to accept this anti-social scam? Yet, this is the true affect of the profit that society has been trained to worship. In an honest money system, there would be no need for debt at all.