"Profiteering" is an Exclusively Statist Practice

The free market continually eliminates profits through the process of competitive arbitrage. The state continually tries to sustain them by converting them into monopoly rents. In other words, "profiteering" is an exclusively statist practice. In a free market, to pursue profit successfully is to eliminate it. In a "regulated" market, to pursue profit successfully is to petrify it into a monopolistic, coercive privilege. Bear that in mind whenever you hear the flagrant nonsense about "free market greed".

Non-Excludability, Externalities, and Entrepreneurship – An Overview of the Austrian Theory of Common Goods

According to the neoclassical economic theory, common goods would be underproduced by the market in the absence of a monopoly of force capable of coercing every able member of society to contribute to their provision. By applying both the methodological tools developed by the Austrian School of Economics and the tools used to investigate the institutional robustness of various systems of political economy, I shall argue, first, that the neoclassical characteristics of common goods are based on a number of false assumptions or unacceptable oversimplifications, and second, that even if they were correct as stated, they would not establish the desirability of the existence of a monopoly of force.

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On the Austrian Theory of Common Goods

My paper "Non-excludability, Externalities, and Entrepreneurship: An Overview of the Austrian Theory of Common Goods" has just been published in the first issue of the Journal of Prices & Markets. You might want to read it if you are interested in topics such as monopoly, common goods, and externalities.