Profit

  Profit is not real. It is all psychological. Profit is needed to create incentive in people's minds that what they are doing is the right thing. As long as they think what they are doing is profitable, they will keep doing it. Even if it is not profitable from one perspective, so long as it seems profitable from their perspective, it justifies a continuation of that activity.

  The native americans of Manhattan sold the island for 64 Dutch Guilders worth of animal skins. That is about 24 ounces of silver in the 1600s. At today's market price, that is about 648 dollars or 4 cents an acre. The Natives really valued animal skins. They walked away absolutely happy with the transaction.

  In contrast the Louisiana purchase that Napoleon sold to Jefferson in order to fund the continental war in Europe cost 15 million dollars or 7.5 million ounces of silver in the 1800s. Which at today's market price is about 2.5 dollars an acre.

 Joseph in the old testament was sold for 20 silver coins, Jesus for 30 in the new.

  In all of the above cases, they thought it was worth the transaction. Both parties walked away thinking they made a profit. Profit is nothing more than a mind game. Depending on how you measure profit, whether its in Yen, Euros, Dollars, Gold, Silver, Beaver skins, victory in Europe, you will come up with different results.

 If I made only 10,000 ounces of gold in one year, but the price of gold fell to 1 dollar an ounce, that would be considered a loss to the year where I only made 1 ounce of gold the entire year, but that one ounce was worth 50,000 dollars.

 But at the same time if I made 100,000 dollars a year, but the price of gold per ounce also went up to 100,000 dollars a year, I might walk away thinking I had a profitable year.