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profit motive

noun

  1. the desire for profit that motivates one to engage in business ventures.


profit motive

  1. The ability to earn profits as the reason for producers to make and sell goods .


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Notes

The profit motive is often called a great good or a great evil in society. On the one hand, it is said to represent selfishness; on the other, it is said to drive the free market system. ( See invisible hand .)

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Word History and Origins

Origin of profit motive1

First recorded in 1930–35

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Example Sentences

These are not inevitable outcomes, they are human decisions, and they are almost always made by people who are driven by a profit motive that tends to exploit the poor and working class historically.

From Vox

Earlier this week, the company earned a spot for the second year in a row on Fortune’s Change the World list, which features companies that leverage the profit motive to tackle urgent social problems.

From Fortune

Marx forecast that the profit motive would lead to overworking and exhausting the fertility of our soil and other natural systems.

The biggest driver for future peace will be the profit motive.

Some are on the take for sure, either out of profit motive or else a theory they are certain must be true.

On the one hand, the profit motive can be a powerful motive to inspire just-in-time inventory and rapid restocking.

I think that every good conservative capitalist pursues the profit motive.

Relax the profit motive, and mankind would again stand forth in its pristine narrowness and bigotry and cruelty.

He wanted to develop other areas more from the humanitarian view than the profit motive.

Very likely we much exaggerate the importance of the profit motive.

To fulfill this task they must be free of the profit motive.

We have seen that the root of the evil in modern society is the profit motive.

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