Imagining this is not easy.
Jesus was disgusted by money-lenders in the temple during his short human life. That tells me that the idea of money and profit already existed. Lenders are all about the profit. It's in their interest.
This doesn't really prove money lending is immoral, but it does prove humans have been profiting off the poor and unfortunate for a very long time. No one borrows money unless they are desperate or not very aware of the foibles of borrowing.
In the beginning, people bartered. Bartering is the exchange of a good or service for another good or service. Bartering was not all about profit. It was about exchanging what I have by my efforts more than I need of, for those items I need but don't have--either don't know how to make it or can't grow it or kill it. A great potter (but terrible weaver or incompetent hunter) can exchange a cooking vessel for a blanket to stay warm or a dead rabbit for supper.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-money-1992150
Money is anything that is commonly accepted by a group of people for the exchange of goods, services or resources. Every country has its own system of coins and paper money. At one time, salt, shells, beads, and furs have been used as money. They were items that were innately valuable to the people that traded in them. Gemstones, precious metals, all metals have also been traded as currency. So--still basically bartering.
When Europeans started paying native people in trade beads and cloth in exchange for things the native people considered easy to come by, there developed profit in bartering. Spices, perfumes, furs of exotic animals, artwork, craft items, all became more valuable when traded to people that did not have the ability to make them or the resources to obtain them. Europeans were very good at bartering their cheap goods for expensive items. And were also very good at colonizing an area that would allow them to turn the native people into unpaid workers and the resources into their own property. While feudal areas allowed that Might made Rich by virtue of providing protection from outsiders while taxing their peasantry and merchants--those first profiteers; and not allowing anyone that wasn't of noble or royal blood to own land, they made vassals of most everyone.
Capitalism replaced feudalism vs tribalism (a kind of small scale, socialism, communism with some often harsh rules and strange beliefs) with the onset of world exploration by Europeans in search of riches and adventure. Greed was the new morality of everyone, not just the hereditary leaders.
But imagining a world without profit.
That is hard.
I was raised to believe that if I worked hard my whole life I could be rich and successful. (it was always rich first, successful second, gives successful a very pointed meaning)
I was raised on the marketing ploys of written, spoken and visual advertisements that promised me that owning the right clothes, make-up, car, food, toys, furniture would make becoming "rich and successful" closer to a reality.
I was told the right places to vacation, the right hobbies to enjoy, the right styles to decorate my home, and the books I and then my children should read to become rich and successful.
I expected cigarettes to make me sophisticated and milk to make me strong. And Jello was good for me.
Since 1845 when gelatin was discovered/invented (patented) (Gelatin is a yellowish, odorless, and nearly tasteless substance that is made by prolonged boiling of skin, cartilage, and bones from animals. It's made primarily from the stuff meat industries have left over-we're talking about pork skins, horns, and cattle bones.), I with millions of children and sick people and people that frequent church suppers, have consumed a gazillion tons of wiggling, brightly colored, artificially flavored salads and desserts. Jello, heavily marketed and containing basically scrap animal parts now belongs to Kraft Foods, that has over a 4 billion dollar profit per year.
It could have been worse.
We have soda's--carbonated soft drinks--originally marketed as a health tonic and sold in pharmacies. Those first recipes contained carbonated water, syrup, and such healthful additives as cocaine, strychnine, cannabis, morphine, opium, heroin, Sarsparilla--supposed to cure syphilis, contains steroidal components, sassafras--used to be in rootbeer but comes with warnings of cancer and liver damage.
The FDA has removed everything but the high fructose corn syrup, caramel coloring---neither are good for you, but....neither are the brightly shaded food dyes that make our children love their breakfast cereal and cupcakes and pretty much everything that isn't some shade of brown or gray. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/24/are-you-or-your-family-eating-toxic-food-dyes.aspx
We don't add food dyes and addictive drugs to items because we love our customers and want them to be healthy. We do it so it will sell.
It's all about the profit.
When I was a kid, a teacher that had been in WWII told me about a pal of his that had invented an engine that would get over 50 mpg. The pal patented it. But he couldn't sell it. It was not good for the petroleum industry. It would decrease the amount of gasoline they sold.
When I was a kid, my grandmother still had this monstrous refrigerator from the 30's or 40's that ran on gas--propane. It was over 20 years old when she replaced it, not because it quit working but because she remarried and he had a newer one. That newer one didn't last over 20 years before it quit.
My previous refrigerator had its door fall off it's hinges at age 3. They couldn't fix it. The model no longer existed so getting the door and paying the repairman would be more than a new one.
My father could take a car, any car built before 1970--and make it work--forever. Those cars were heavy, got terrible mileage, but if you replaced hoses and filters and plugs and changed the oil and brake linings--well, in truth, it was a 1968 overhead cam he taught me to also change rings and lifters and rods, but all those things were replaceable and the car just keeps on working.
Today, a car has an expiration date. If it is maintained well, depending on what kind, you can 200,000 or 300,000+ miles out of it. But back then, they just kept rolling over. It didn't matter, everything was fixable in the garage. Add an acetylene torch and you could even fix it after you wrecked it. Today--repairs are too high. The parts are to high.
Its part of that planned next purchase to keep the car maker's profits high.
That is the very essence of planned obsolescence. That is how you keep those profits rolling in.
We have landfills over-flowing with items that could have been built to last or made to repair, instead, we make everything with a shelf-life and expected time for next purchase.
We have created our entire culture, our whole way of life on the premise that being a consumer is good for us all. We buy over-packaged items for the convenience of it because we have to work so much we could never just make a meal from items that came from a farm. We work 40 hours and spend 50 hours a week getting ready for work, travelling to work, taking a rest break at work and travelling home from work--usually with at least one side trip because once we get home we don't want to go our again unless its for fun. We spend our weekends hauling kids to all those planned and organized activities that will help them become "rich and successful" adults.
And if we have free time--we shop. For fun. It's an activity like going to the old farmers markets and country fairs.
Walk in a mall or a Walmart on any weekend and tell me the atmosphere is not the same as going to the fair.
We have competitive couponers.
We have shopping channels--more than one.
We have magazines that tell us how to move out last years purchases so that we don't look like hoarders.
I'm still wearing 20 year old sweaters and socks. The rest of me is not the same size, so stretchy stuff only---because I can spend 3 hours in the grocery store and I'm cooking for one.
I can hardly imagine a world not based on profit.
My entire life has been about profit.
Not making one, but making sure those people that are "rich and successful" are making one.
So maybe we need to start small, with those things that have a purpose that was never supposed to be about profit.
Like water, air, education, healthcare, prisons, childcare, elder care, medication, but also maybe food and public transportation. That is to start.
Maybe we need to figure out how to "normalize" it all so that the stockholders are not making more off their investment of money that just grows and grows through no effort of their own due to government rebates and credits and tax breaks, while the miners and roughnecks and mill workers and factory line workers, the designers and marketers and specification manual writers and bookkeepers are making out like--well like the paid help.
Is the whole "rich and successful" the carrot on a stick the actual rich folks like to hold in front of us to keep us plugging away when most of us have never met an actual "rich and successful" person.
I've met successful people. People that live a full life doing what they love. People that have followed their dreams of singing or acting or painting. None of them became rich. But they were successful.
I've met successful parents. They were great at parenting. Their children turned out to be great people.
I've met people that have ran their own business for years and paid for their home and their kids education and some vacations and cars. The business was well respected and the employees considered their job a second home. They were not "Rich". Upper middle income at most.
And I've met people, a lot of people, that into their 50's were still trying to grab the brass ring. They were chasing "rich and successful" and it was making them miserable. They knew they would eventually make it. Just one more college degree. Just one more move for a new and better job. A bigger house and nicer car, more expensive clothes and someone would get that they were born to be "rich and successful". By 60 they looked 70 and owed so much money they would not be able to retire until they were 90. They had an thick belly from all the cortisol pumped into them by their own stress. Their blood sugar was high---from the same. If you drew their blood, it came out with chunks of what looked like butter floating in it due to convenience foods and fancy restaurants. Their liver enzymes were always high--from all the power lunches and business dinners with at least one martini and the pain killers for the tension headaches. The kidney function was not up to snuff from all the NSAIDs they took for joint pain from their muscle tension and inactivity. They had daily heart palpitations in response to too little sleep and too much caffeine. They were successful, and just knew the rich would follow.
I've been to several of their funerals. Too young for dying. And frequently leaving a spouse that had no idea how to deal with the debt, although, frequently still working hard for that "rich and successful" also, so doubling down to make enough to pay both their halves of the bills.
And I meet people that seem to have suddenly woke up. Looked around. Started Simplifying. Slowed down. Took up nature walks instead of shopping sprees. Decreased the number of weekend kid activities so both the child and the parent had some down time. Paid attention to the type of food they bought and cooked. Ate in more. Drank fewer sweet drinks. Started weird things like meditating daily or writing what they are grateful for every night in a journal. Took up hobbies like bird watching or rock hunting or drawing--lead pencils, even great artist quality pencils are pretty cheap. And gardening--from raised beds to patio pots to full scale plots, the excitement of picking something you grew and eating it--pretty amazing stuff.
Perhaps, in a non-profit world, we just have to learn to redefine successful--focus on the happiness part, the kind part, the thoughtful, caring, creative part.
Maybe we will eventually even redefine "Rich"
Having a great deal of money or assets; wealthy needs to become archaic
Having a plentiful; abundant life, rich with happiness, joy, memories, skills, love---that is a "rich and successful" life that a non-profit world would be right at home with.
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