Franc tries to justify collectivism again...and fails again

Poor, poor Franc. SE and I continue to pick on him, and he never gives us a reason to let up. His latest lame-brained attempt to justify collectivism: Profit is not justified by entrepreneurial risk.

He writes:

The “libertarian” capitalists often use risk as their rationale for accepting the profit motive. In this reasoning, profit is the reward that capitalist owners get for taking the risks that the workers aren’t taking.

Actually, no. Risk is an important factor, no doubt about it. But time preference is equally important. Some people are willing to take the money and run, while others are willing to wait if compensated with profit.

And of course, the most important factor of all--at least from a libertarian perspective--is the "mind your own goddamn business" factor. There is no reason for consenting adults to have to "justify" anything to Franc, or to any other collectivist. They can set up whatever contracts or conditions for use of each other's property that they damn well please. They act in their own self-interest, and simply disregard the arbitrary moralists and mystics of the Tremblay and Chomsky variety.

If I'm only willing to lend you my property on the condition that you give me part of what you produce with it, then tough luck! Even if there was nothing in it for your sorry ass at all (and there is), it doesn't mean I have to "justify" diddily shit.

For one thing, this is absolute bollocks, since the workers take just as much risk as the owners.

Um...no. If the workers were taking the same risks and responsibilities as the owners, they would be the owners.

Workers have to contend with losing their jobs

What they don't have to worry about losing is all their money (which in Franc's world will grow on trees, right inside of the magical mutual banks with zero interest rates).

Franc goes on with his Marxist beliefs:

Let us be clear on this: the capitalist concept of profit is nothing more than a rent on capital, predicted on the concept that capital participates in the making of the full product. Benjamin Tucker has already refuted this nonsense 120 years ago. Capital is not owed a wage because only people produce, not money or tools. Profit is therefore nonsense.

So a person who puts extensive time, effort, or money into the capital being used is worthless and has done nothing significant. Brilliant insight!

Maybe Franc picked this up from Obama's book. Or a Mao Zedong speech, perhaps?

But more importantly, if it’s true that risk-taking is a skill that capitalist owners must have in order for their business to be successful, then it should be a job rewarded like any other. Just as mutual banks providing capital should be rewarded for their work, not with rent on capital but with a wage, risk assessers should be rewarded for their work, not with rent on capital but with a wage.

Spoken like a Soviet central planner! Dictator Franc will decide through fiat how payment will work, who will be "rewarded," and who will be eligible to receive wages.

As George Reisman has warned, Franc's doctrine is economic suicide. His freakishly bizarre system (no profits, no interest, no rent) would have almost zero capital accumulation, and thus very low standards of living. But that has always been the goal of collectivism: to make everyone equally miserable.