Capital, Interest, and Profit

03/01/2004 Murray N. Rothbard

Profit is total revenue minus total costs. Ours is not just a profit system, it is a profit and loss system. Losses are a sign that you wasted land, labor, or capital, yet those who make profits are criticized.

Entrepreneurship is an art not a course you can learn.

Labor earns wages. Land earns rent. Capital earns interest. Confusingly, the word capital means both the machines used to produce goods and the funds available for investment. Bohm-Bawerk answered the question of where interest rates come from.

Time is the key element in the earning of interest. The capitalist who pays out while he waits for the product to be sold before being paid, performs a vital function of paying for land and labor now. The capitalist is rewarded by being paid a discount on labor and land, discounted by the rate of interest. There are all sorts of rates of time preferences.

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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