I would need a breakdown in definition between profit and rent seeking.
Discussion
Profit is just margin. The difference between what you pay for something and what you sell it for. If I travel to a far off land to buy spices, bring them back and sell them to you for a price that is worth more to you than the money you trade, both of us win. The margin is what you were willing to pay for someone to go get those spices for you.
If my neighbor can find a way to make the trip more efficient, he can give you a better price.
We compete and prices fall to the marginal cost of production. The world gets more efficient and thus we are all better off. Everyone's money is a little more useful and so we all get richer.
Rent seeking is I have a thing you need, or I can get the government to force you somehow, so I use my leverage over you to extract the maximum I can take from you. Often that will be more than you have, by a bond ("loan") so I take your freedom and then I can sell my claim on you future work and set up enforcement, regulation, etc.
One is a freely negotiated exchange of value, the other one is extortion.
We live in a world where these waters have been intentionally muddied. They have pretended that rent-seeking is fair play, called it "profit". Some people have reacted, understandably, by saying "well profit is evil then." But it's not. Profit is good. Usury is evil. There is a reason why that word is old and strange to us.
Profit is not margin. Profit is what’s above cost and labor.
Why do you consider labor to be separate from cost
Labor is a part of cost, all labor included. Most people complain if I don’t include labor because they believe with no profit the “owners” make zero money. Which is educated and self employed people like ourselves know these things but not everyone does.
If your goal is to reify something called capitalism and blame it. Go ahead, but it doesn't mean anything. That's just ideological programming. If you want to engage in real terms, but ideological checkers is boring and will never solve anything or get you closer to the truth.
Arguing over maps while ignoring the territory is pointless.
Is there a point you'd like to address that you can express in non-ideological terms?
If you have something I need to live, is it a negotiation on price? Who has leverage? Sounds like a paywall for something you know I need. Surely you can agree with that?
So if we have something that you need to live, we should give it to you without a price, ignoring the cost?
Absolutely not, it would operate just like co ops operate now. My power company is a co op.
I love cooperatives. But just because they don't focus on earning additional profits that they can provide to shareholders doesn't mean they don't try to lower their costs and manage their business operations in the exact same way as any other type of business entity.
Unfortunately we disagree there and there is mountains of historical evidence to back up that “for profit” leads to exploitation.
I think we're just talking past each other now. I'm talking about cooperatives, you might be talking about for profit companies, I can't even tell anymore.
The best way to prevent any change is to keep using the old language of debt based systems.
Moving on.