Mike,
It seems to me that the dichotomy profits=efficiency vs. morality =equity
and community is based on a separation of the ends means relationship. That
is efficiency is a means to a relative end. Morality is concerned with ends.
It one wants to reach a good human society without exploitation then profits
are a very inefficient way to reach that end since exploitation of humans
destroys the greatest wealth, the human being's powers and needs. There are
inherent contradictions in the neoclassical conceptions of profit as a
residual and a cost simultaneously, which hides from view production
processes and surplus labor time. It's also interesting that in simple
supply and demand diagrams there is a not so hidden simultaneism of input and
output prices that refers one to a resource market (costs) or output market
(residual) but never to the middle, the production process and TIME.
Ted