I think we agree. But my point is that statements like that from O'Reilly (and Bill Gates, at other times) allow shallow-thinking people to start formulating ideas that businesses shouldn't make a profit.

Yes, money is a means to an end, rather than the end itself. You can't take it with you, and stored money is useless unless deployed as investment.

But there is no other viable way to that end, as much as people like to pretend there is. When we lose sight of this, we slip into muddle-headed thinking and everyone loses out. Eventually, an unprofitable enterprise will lose staff, investors, suppliers and will die.

It's as though we're all riding a train called 'profit' to our destination, but everyone in the dining car is pretending we're really levitating on a magic carpet of good intentions to our destination, because is is impolite to talk about the train that is carrying us along. The 'train' needs to be brought back into our conversations.

It's as though we've traded the Victorian distaste for discussions about sex with a modern distate for discussions about making money, even though everybody does it as much as they can.