In any exchange between people what is received is more valuable to the receiver than what is given to the other. What I want from you is more valuable to me than what I have to give you in exchange for what you have or I will not make the exchange with you at this time. What you want from me must be more valuable to you than what you have to give in exchange for what I have or you will not make an exchange with me at this time. Because of the exchange, each person feels they are better off than they were before the moment of exchange; each person is enriched at least for the moment. Both people in the exchange profit in the sense that each person now possesses something more valuable than they had before. This is the way all exchanges work that are freely engaged in.
The reason exchanges work in this manner is because how I ‘value’ something is inside me and how you ‘value’ something is inside you. I give ‘value’ to things by desiring or appreciating them; if I do not desire or appreciate them then they have no ‘value’ for me. Things do not have ‘value’ in themselves apart from a person valuing them. The ‘value’ I hold for any given thing ranks higher or lower than a value I hold for something else. That two people value the same thing differently creates the possibility of exchange. That I value something that I have less than I value something that you have and that you value something that you have less than you value something that I have fosters possible exchange. In the exchange we each get something that we value more than what we gave up.
The reason for the exchange is to profit from it. Without profit there would be no exchange. The profit is not necessarily quantifiable; it is based in the feeling of being better off than one was before. Profit is, first of all, a matter of rank (valuing one thing over another thing) and not a matter of quantity; to the degree that profit can be quantitatively measured it can be positive or negative, but weather it is positive or negative makes no difference within the exchange itself. A free exchange between people is mutually beneficial when it occurs or it will not occur: both people involved in a free exchange profit. If after the exchange takes place and the feeling of being better off (the feeling of profiting) goes away then a feeling of being misled or of being ripped off and of being worse for the exchange may arise; then a re-evaluation (a re-valuing) inside me will begin and future rankings will adjust.
The point of all this is that profit is not the root of all evil and profit can be seen for what it is: profit is the basis of all exchange of goods and services. Without profit there is no reason to freely exchange anything at all. To dismiss profit as a motive one would have to dismiss the desiring, wanting or preferring of one thing over another. To dismiss profit one would have to give up ‘valuing’ altogether and no choices would ever be made. Profit is actually an expression of freedom as we get along with one another. If there was no such thing as profit we would isolate ourselves never desiring to get along with each other because we would have nothing to offer each other in exchange. Cooperation is profitable (it mutually occurs to each person as a result of an exchange) and the destruction of profit will ultimately lead to aggression and war as the desire for cooperation breaks down.
I am not convinced that both parties benefit from interaction from one another. There are times that a conversation is dominated by one party over the other. A person can be very skillful at manipulating the conversation and hence get a warped sense of satisfaction that leaves the second party feeling confused and unfulfilled. People can enter conversations with the thought of conecting with another person at different levels and leave with the feeling of “What just happened?” “How did it go from this to that?” People don’t always enter the conversation with the same intent. This limits the benefits people get from the conversation.
Hi Maury,
I got through the first one, and I’m thinking about it.
thanks, Dave
Every forth game?
Thank you Maury.
That helps me keep things in some persective.
Sometimes the only thing worse than having it is the alternative.
Hi Mary Fran,
I am a month late in responding to you, but here goes.
The feeling of being manipulated and unfulfilled is expressed by—
“A free exchange between people is mutually beneficial when it occurs or it will not occur: both people involved in a free exchange profit. If after the exchange takes place and the feeling of being better off (the feeling of profiting) goes away then a feeling of being misled or of being ripped off and of being worse for the exchange may arise; then a re-evaluation (a re-valuing) inside me will begin and future rankings will adjust.”
The re-valuating process goes on inside me when I reflect on the ‘feeling’ aspect of problems present in daily life.
Thanks for responding