Criminal justice aspires to punish vice. Social justice rewards vice and punishes virtue. Poetic justice spontaneously rewards virtue and punishes vice. In our postmodern world, the virtue that is universally punished is profit, despite the fact that profit is the economic power that drives human survival and human flourishing.
When a hunter cuts a branch from a tree, balances and sharpens it into a spear, and captures wild game, that is profit. When a farmer sows seeds and harvests vegetables and grain, that is profit. When a carpenter builds a cart for hauling the farmer’s crops, the hunter’s meat, and the tradesman’s hides and tools to market, that is the profit that allows producers to become consumers.
Supply creates its own demand. Jean-Baptiste Say
Money is the tool used by the hunter, the farmer, and the carpenter to trade their products at market. The banker secures their unspent wealth so they can specialize and become more efficient. Like a master chef integrates raw food and heat with chemistry, the banker also creates wealth by investing their savings in the most productive ways possible.
We invest in entrepreneurs because self-interested, mutually beneficial trade using money is the keystone of civilization. Not only is it the objective measurement for allocating resources, it is essential for funding the arts, benevolence, and human flourishing.
The Wuhan virus genome was mapped earlier this year, and was possible only with capital. Capital is possible only with production. Production requires human ingenuity. Human ingenuity requires political freedom. Political freedom requires economic freedom. Economic freedom is possible only with profit. Mark Shupe
Money transports unspent wealth into the future, and profit rewards this virtuous behavior, for its own sake. When society withholds moral justice for what is good, profit becomes the mother of all Poetic Justice.