In a commentary published Tuesday at American Thinker, writer Eric Utter offers a full-throated defense of the profit motive, arguing that the pursuit of reward is the engine behind nearly every advance of modern civilization — and that its ideological opponents misunderstand human nature itself.
Utter opens with a blunt assertion: without the profit motive, “we’d still be stuck in the Dark Ages.” His reasoning is a straightforward cost-benefit calculation. Why, he asks, would anyone invest time, effort, and resources into inventing something or improving a service if there were no chance of a substantial payoff? The cons, he writes, would far outweigh the pros, and any rational risk-reward analysis would conclude the trouble wasn’t worth it.
The column runs through the practical consequences of that hypothetical, arguing that a world without profit incentives would lack the internet, smartphones, automobiles, airplanes, and even the gas grill. Dentistry, in his telling, would still amount to a couple of shots of whiskey. And the flush toilet, he notes, owes its existence to the man whose name remains attached to it in popular slang. In each case, Utter suggests, the desire for reward is what drove someone to find a better way.
A Critique of Socialist Ideology
From there, Utter pivots to a direct critique of socialism, Marxism, and communism, which he says either fail to understand human nature or deliberately reject it. He contends that all of history has borne this out, and that young people today are no longer taught factual history — a gap he attributes to educators he dismisses as “AWFULs” who either don’t care about the past or reject it outright, driven by a search for meaning and a desire to feel virtuous.
The article pivots to the human toll of communist regimes, asserting that communism has never worked except to kill millions — more than 100 million people in the 20th century alone, by his count. Whether that outcome was the original intention, he writes, is beside the point, and he directs readers to consider the families of those who perished.
Utter then turns his attention to the West, describing what he calls “history’s single greatest and most painful irony”: that capitalism, free markets, and the profit motive made Western nations so wealthy that most citizens no longer had to worry about survival or even work particularly hard — and in turn became entitled rather than grateful. His illustration is deliberately mundane: a television remote that fails to work, forcing someone to get up and change the channel, becomes a crisis. In his view, this reflects a population grown soft and lazy, afflicted by what he calls a “loveless empathy” that is extended not to those who deserve it but to the most law-breaking, immoral, and violent.
Allies, Welfare States, and the Question of Dignity
The column extends the argument beyond individuals to nations. Utter points to countries that benefited from American security guarantees and used that protection to build cradle-to-grave welfare states rather than provide for their own defense. That some of these nations now mock or disdain America, he writes, is evidence of what he terms their moral rot. Like long-term welfare recipients, he argues, they have surrendered their dignity, autonomy, and work ethic — whether they realize it or not.
He singles out Germany and England, once strong and proud nations he now describes as pathetic shells of their former selves, and says he is pained to see the same pattern taking hold in the United States. His proposed remedy for young American socialists is travel — specifically, extended stays in countries he views as cautionary examples. He imagines sending a college student to Lebanon, Cuba, Niger, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea, Chad, Eritrea, or Venezuela for a week at a time and suggests the experience would leave them unwilling to continue badmouthing their homeland after a couple of months.
Progressivism as Regression
Utter’s verdict on progressivism is unsparing: it isn’t progress at all, he writes, but regression toward chaos and immorality. Communism, in his framing, is not a cure but a disease — a fatal one, 100 percent of the time — and like all diseases, it is more likely to be overcome if caught and treated early. He closes with a question about whether the public has the will to address it or will instead keep its collective head in the sand because that is easier.
He invokes G.K. Chesterton for his final note: “A civilization is not destroyed by wicked men; it is destroyed by weak men who cannot defend what is good.” The decision, he concludes, rests with the West — whether to save its nations, which he calls the most successful on Earth, or condemn them to the trash bin of history.
The piece closes with a fundraising appeal for American Thinker, which asks readers who find the outlet’s work resonant to consider donating to support its staff and keep its ideas in circulation.
Utter’s argument is unlikely to persuade readers who see the profit motive as a source of inequality rather than progress, or who view the Nordic and Western European welfare states as evidence that generous social provision and prosperity can coexist. But as an expression of a durable strain of conservative thought — one that treats market incentives as the foundation of civilization and collectivism as an existential threat — it captures a set of assumptions that continue to animate right-leaning economic commentary.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/in-defense-of-profit/