I think that many times we are too negligent and mediocre in our economic activity, we lack ambition for what is positive and for the best, conforming with "just getting along." We certainly should not covet the negative and the prosaic but it is important however to aspire to excellence and perfection even though in the end we do not achieve it. The effort made in attempting it makes it worthwhile, and because of that I have never understood very well the dialectical and absurd tirades against the expert search for maximum profit.

As early as the 19th century Francis Walker separated profit, retribution for capacity and typical managerial activity, from land rent and income from interest. In turn he affirmed that this managerial activity was the motive power of the modern economy. Later Schumpeter's analysis of profit as compensation for innovation in production methods, organization or quality and differentiation of products, had decisive importance. For his part Knight gave a definitive impulse to the study of profit, relating it to uncertainty that he defined as "the difference between the conditions that the theory is forced to assume and those that exist in reality. Any attempt to explain human action inevitably implies some reference, implicit or explicit, regarding the expectations for future situations or contingencies which the actions must go through or which must accompany them."

The managerial task consists of endowing goods with serviceability to make them more productive and in this way achieve maximum profit. A company will settle more firmly and solidly in the market the more and the better its products serve. If what is given to the rest of society is no good for anything or anybody, the company tends to become impoverished and extinguish itself. With that we can conclude that if its activity is no good for anybody, neither is it good for itself. From this perspective, and keeping in mind the enriching displacement of necessities - beginning with the most basic and ending with the superior or less material - it is understood that wealth is not so related to existent physical realities as to future ones, and with the stimulus, quality and future human working capacity.

The enormous diversity, increased by specialization, of productive human activities, together with the great variety of end use goods, requires a common measure that allows the economic calculation of subjective suitability of our products to the preferences of different potential clients. Prices and money, that transform different products into more expandable and simpler goods, are decisive instruments for the possibility of economic calculation with which the manager makes his decisions. This venturesome activity, free of obstacles and in competition, produces numerous and beneficial effects on the end users, that expand throughout the whole network of economic exchanges. To conserve his wealth, the manager continually has to persevere in the service to his potential clients that on a daily basis confirm or revoke his trust. Profit becomes an incentive and a judge that appraises the correct orientation of the production system, allowing to rectify errors and improve on successes in a process of continuous reconversion towards the most suitable and in the best possible way.

This venturesome mentality that pivots on profit and looks to carry out innovations in service to others to improve its own, can and should be assumed by all agents, if optimum economic action is desired. All workers and individuals too, directly as proprietors of physical goods with free power of assignment on them and proprietors, by their own freedom, can and should act economically in society with regard to the legitimate objective of increasing their material and human patrimony. It is necessary to break the schizophrenia of acting with different approaches as a manager, worker and consumer. There is a unique approach which is that of excellence, that of maximization of value.

We meet again with the key statement that the scholastics helped to develop starting from ancient Greek thought, that wealth or economic value, is not condemnable but rather it is licit to try to increase it exactly. This common reference in the beginnings of economic thought that transformed the medieval isolationist economic system into a system of enormous commercial strength, needs to be reconsidered in our current rather mediocre economic panorama.

Applied to the positive and the convenient, the fundamental economic approach of effectiveness consists of making the most of everything, in maximizing. We cannot remain in mediocrity or indifference, but rather we have to try to reach the maximum with the minimum, produce more than the best and as soon as possible, create the maximum destroying the minimum. Not in vain, the economic act that has never ever been surpassed consisted of creating everything, from nothing. Biblia dixit.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Gaceta de los Negocios, Monday June 14th 1993