It seems that one obligatory item can be found at any protest rally these days, regardless of its cause.
Be it an ''occupy'' mob protesting against relative income inequality, a group campaigning for an environmental cause or a cohort agitating for social changes, one is almost guaranteed to find at least one placard that reads: ''People before profits''.
This sentiment has long been reflected in socialist thinking, which conceives the appearance of a profit in a company's accounts as evidence of the exploitation of production value provided by underpaid working classes.
Other lines of thought also inform this antagonistic attitude towards profit making, such as the idea that firms can only reap profits by imposing exorbitant prices on goods and services that the consuming public is forced to bear.
To some extent the economics profession has largely unwittingly fed public sentiment against corporate profitability, by portraying continuous profit as a kind of market imperfection in a world where perfect competition would otherwise eliminate economic profits in the long run.
All of these approaches which feed the ''people before profits'' narrative create an obstacle to a more reasoned understanding of the largely beneficial role and nature of profit.
When it is appreciated that the attainment of profits is a signal of economic excellence, and not greedy exploitation or awkward imperfection, there is in fact a good argument instead to scrawl ''people and profits'' on placards rather than ''people before profits''.
When explaining profitability it would be remiss not to mention the entrepreneur, such as Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Sir Richard Branson, who purchases and marshals capital, labour and other resources to produce goods and services for sale on the open market.
The entrepreneur undertakes the task of organising the business and covering its costs, assuming economic risks and confronting government impositions, all in the hope that the effort invested will eventually reap a reward of a profitable economic activity.
As important as the entrepreneur is to any market economy, it is the action from the other side of the counter that confirms whether or not a business keeps some revenue leftovers after all the expenses are covered.
In other words it is the amount of purchases by humble, everyday customers that determines if a business, regardless of its size, generates a profit representing a return to perceptive yet hard working entrepreneurship.
As the 20th century economist Ludwig von Mises once stated, it is the purchasing decisions of customers that ''render profitable the affairs of those businessmen who best comply with their wishes''.
And, lest public suspicions linger that a dollar of profit earned is a dollar reaped through monopolistic exploitation, a profit announcement by one business sends out a signal to businesses everywhere that there exists a market that could keep on delivering an excess of revenues over costs.
These profits encourage entry by new sellers into the lucrative market, in turn providing further investment and employment opportunities for market participants. Economic creativity is fuelled as new entrepreneurs tinker with the successful products with a view to deepening the market with more sales to new customers.
In addition to the role of profits in encouraging product quality improvements, competition between larger numbers of business rivals will tend to drive down final prices for the benefit of the consumers.
Like applause volunteered by patrons at an art exhibition or sporting match for outstanding performance, profits represent the echoes of economic applause resonating throughout the entire market system.
Yet those who complain about profitability also tend to ignore the existence of profit's flipside, and that is loss, as a powerful error-correcting element of the market process.
When all is said and done nobody is forced to provide custom to a private business.
If the business does not provide a useful product or decent service there will be no custom and hence insufficient sales revenues to cover costs and deliver a profit.
And technological, economic and other changes can also render a previously profitable business model unviable in the long term.
The economic reality is that it is a commonplace experience for a profit rooster one day to turn into a feather duster of loss the next.
Ironically this is a key to why capitalism is so successful.
That is because a business incurring a loss signals to the wider market that scarce resources should be redirected to other ventures instead.
This will then ensure that a market economy sticks with more efficient activities more generally.
Anti-capitalist protesters in recent weeks have trained their critical attention toward politically well-connected business establishments, particularly in automobiles, energy and finance, that persuaded governments to subsidise their operations and insulate them from adverse economic conditions.
These protesters share with small government classical liberals an intense distaste for rent-seeking activities that ''socialise'' corporate losses at taxpayer expense.
But the two groups diverge to the extent that anti-capitalists not only wish to see an end to the corporate welfare culture but also to the realisation of profits through honest, open, customer-pleasing market competition.
The appearance of ''people before profits'' placards will come and go as protests wax and wane, but which side arguing the merits or otherwise of profitability ends up winning the hearts and minds of the public will unquestionably play a critical part in shaping our future economic direction.
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