Money makes the world go around... fast or slow

Someone complained about miserable treatment by AirFrance-KLM, and I had a Facebook exchange:

One blog post gets Air France to crash on social media

www.firstpost.com

• Me: And these are the companies in competitive environment that EU imposes carbon penalties on.
  
  Customers suffer in the end for bureaucrats' follies and airline management's stupidity.
  
  Response: Customers also suffer because of the insatiable greed of the companies who think of nothing but maximizing their profits - customer service and humanity be damned....
  
  Me:  "Insatiable greed" is moronic term. Nobody can tell how the profits are maximized, or even whether there are any profits. This is claptrap from economic theory, and sophomoric ideologues of both the left and the right believe in it as reality.
  
  Yeah. Applied to the airline industry as a whole which, someone claimed a few years ago, has never made profits, just a series of bankruptcies and mergers.
  
  Of course, in theory it's always "profit maximization subject to constraints", but nobody really knows what those constraints are in the short term or the long term. Otherwise there would be no need for managers and banks, bond markets and regulators (for safety, environmental protection, labor standards, utility service obligations).
  
  I am all in favor of insatiable greed, knowing that no greed is ever satiated.
  I am also in favor of maximizing profits, because at the end of the quarter or the year, only when the accountants have done all their work, the management knows whether the company made a profit and if so, how much. Yes, they do announce their hopes and targets, and are sharply punished if the results are different from those expected by the stock market analysts.
  
  Privately owned and entirely unregulated businesses are another story - e.g., your village bania, landlord. Even they are vulnerable to variations in input and output prices.
  
  For the sake of humanity, please stop berating greed.
  
  Money DOES make the world go around. Sometimes too slow and sometimes too fast. Which is why we need love and friendships.