Lets Make Money II
Of course the opposite of “making money” is “losing money.”
According to a dictionary, losing is : (i) failing to win or (ii) to suffer deprivation of.
One loses money when, as in the case of General Motors, if you add up all the costs of producing your product and add up all the proceeds of selling all of the product you produce, there is more in the former basket and less in the latter basket.
Congratulations, you lost money. No, it was not an accident, as the word lost implies.. It was unintentional in the sense that no one sets out to lose money. It was a bad business idea, a bad plan, bad execution, poor cost control, etc. The things that capitalism require for you to make money were lacking. You did not add to the collective store of value possessed by the human race by making yourself rich (the profit part of making money) nor by benefiting your customers (the inevitable result of competition). You simply consumed value.
Today GM and Chrysler consume value. They spend more making their product then the sale of their product brings on the open marketplace. They destroy value, they lose money.