> profit from doing so
Is the first actually a requirement? I can think of plenty of companies that do the second part well, but have nothing to do with the first one.
The purpose of a company is to make a profit and provide a good or service. In that order. Everything else is a hobby.
That has changed, especially since the 80s, where the prevalent world view turned to "let's have the market figure out purpose", which equates to anything that is profitable is good.
We've since learned that this isn't automatically true (as exemplified in this abandoned merger, for example), and my understanding is that right now there's no clear opinion in society whether profit or purpose comes first in companies.
Generally speaking, private non-subsidized companies that offer goods and services for sale cannot actually survive without any profit, right? They can bootstrap for a while with investment, but they tend to die, statistically speaking, if they prioritize goods and services over profit. The way companies tend to survive death is by doing everything they can to ensure that the sale of their goods or services generates a profit. You might also be temporarily forgetting that it’s also incredibly common for companies to pivot on what products they make and sell whenever they’re not making enough profit.
TBH it actually seems really funny to me argue about which comes first, because the kind of company we’re talking about needs both, it doesn’t otherwise exist. But the idea parent shared, that profit takes the highest priority, is often absolutely true in practice, many companies will do everything they can to avoid not making a profit, from lowering the quality of their goods and services, to coming up with other more profitable products, to merging with another company that has more customers for your product and/or a longer runway.
