[giraffe_lady]

Profit is surplus value created by the labor of workers. I'm simply saying no one works hard enough to create a billion dollars worth of anything.

Wealth accruing to owners rather than the workers who produce it is older than employment contracts. I'm pointing out that this arrangement is the result of a set of choices that have been made, and we could choose otherwise. The fact that we consider this one approach correct and fair and not others is not inevitable.

[throwaway11460]

A) Profit is not necessarily connected to any workers, this is industrial revolution-era economics straight from the 19th century, modern world is different. Today I can create intellectual property and keep copying it until forever - without a single worker in sight.

B) These workers are free to work on their own - why don't they form their own company or become self employed?

[georgebarnett]

Your overly abstract language has no value here.

Profit is not surplus value created by worker - that’s a 4 year olds understanding and negates all the other components of the system of which labour is only one.

We have tried “choosing” various “arrangements” (or more correctly, competing economic systems) and evidence points to capitalism being the correct approach to maximise liberty, growth and progress.