Fallacy of Profit

"To a point, the lives of the people may be improved by the additional consumption of resources such as food, shelter, clothing, education, and entertainment. We recognize, however, that the benefits of continuously increased rates of consumption are rendered asymptotically toward zero when evaluated at the current scale."

I would like to reiterate this paragraph from the post below entitled "Revolution Time." The subsistence Economy argument is based on four pillars. Each is a recognition of our current flawed system and is a strong criticism of same.
The four pillars are:
Free trade is controlled by producers.
Free trade exploits the land.
Free trade causes social inequity.
Free trade produces useless goods and services that do not contribute to health or happiness.

Allow my to explain the quote above. I didn't say that consumption is a bad thing. All I said was that there is an inflection point beyond which additional consumption does not yield a benefit. I would never seek to deny additional consumption to someone who is going hungry or to someone who is cold. In math, an asymptote is a line which a graph never crosses, but comes infinitely closer to by infinite divisions of the distance between the graph and the asymptote. What I meant by the benefits of additional consumption being "rendered asymptotically toward zero when evaluated at the current scale," was that consuming one more bag of doritos makes so little of a difference in welfare of a person who is already fed, that the benefit is very nearly zero.

The logical next question is, "then how do we justify additional consumption? Do the benefits to one consumer outweigh the social and environmental costs of the good?" The answer is no, the benefit to the consumer does not justify the degradation of land and people. This is why I believe that free trade is not as much of an interaction between consumers and producers as it is a tool used by producers to make profit while hiding the true costs from consumers.

The joke is on the CEO's as well as all of us though, because making another five thousand bucks a year doesn't make them any happier or healthier. You might ask why my emphasis is on Health and happiness. This is because those are the only two things in life that actually matter. And I don't mean that the only thing worth pursuing is one's own health and happiness, I mean that the only thing that matters is working towards health and happiness for all, including the land.

Profit, to a point contributes to health and happiness. The food, health care, shelter, education you can buy with increased money is a boon, but there is a point where even buying these necessities becomes asymptotic. My friend Jeremy's mom has an internship in California where she is given sixty dollars a day for food alone. If she doesn't spend it all it just goes back to the company. She could be eating lobster, steak and dinosaur eggs for every meal with that much money. Does it benefit her? Is she inclined to eat an unhealthy amount? Is she stressed out by all the options? Does she feel guilty and spoiled? What does she think when she sees panhandlers on the street? She has to tell them she has no cash, but she then walks into a store and uses her magical charge card to eat a pound of moon chocolate.

So the fallacy of profit is that profit does not buy happiness. It can't really buy health either. Fancy gym memberships, personal trainers, diet books, organic food, they all cost money, but what really makes you healthy is self respect, self control, and self motivation. Those things are free.