That's why they said "reasonable profit" not just "profit". Most people regard it as unfair or even immoral to charge dramatically more than how the parent describes "reasonable profit".
People probably regard excessive profits as immoral for a variety of reasons:
There are situations where people have little choice but to accept a deal. E.g. imagine someone requiring a drowning person to agree to pay a million dollars to be rescued.
Increased profits are often "unearned" in that they don't stem from something like working harder or innovating. Encouraging innovation and hard work is one of the primary justifications given for capitalism.
Society's operation is often based on the assumption that things will be priced perfectly. E.g. no one would be able to retire if companies where able to perfectly match prices and pay.
The rich hurting the poor in order to become even more rich is considered immoral in almost all philosophies.
> Encouraging innovation and hard work is one of the primary justifications given for capitalism.
Yep. And it's very important that the folks managing our generally-capitalist economy to force businesses to act against their own self-interests and engage in innovation and hard work, rather than milking cash cows for perpetuity. [0]
> Society's operation is often based on the assumption that things will be priced perfectly.
Did you mean to say "priced imperfectly"? If so, then I agree. The same goes for enforcement of laws, actually... which is why largely-unrestricted superhuman surveillance and information correlation powers are such a threat.
> The rich hurting the poor in order to become even more rich is considered immoral in almost all philosophies.
You don't even have to get questions of morality involved.
1) Soaking people for every penny they have means that folks don't have money to buy anything else, which makes it dreadful hard for anything new to enter "the market", because with what money would anyone purchase it? (Not to mention, how the hell can you handle emergency expenses if everyone else is soaking you for all of your money?)
2) People who don't have money for some luxuries are unhappy people. People who don't have money for emergency expenses are very unhappy people. If you have enough people unhappy for long enough, they're going to behave drastically. Maybe they're going to drop out of your system. Maybe they're going to forcefully upend your system.
[0] To be clear, there are products out there that are high quality and need no improvement. It's fine for a company to sell the same solid product or service at a reasonable price from now until the end of time. That's -IMO- the ideal situation for a company to be in. What's NOT fine is if that company prevents other companies from selling similar (or functionally identical) products/services, OR if that company suddenly decides that they need to massively increase the price, decrease the quality (or both) of the product/service.
People probably regard excessive profits as immoral for a variety of reasons:
There are situations where people have little choice but to accept a deal. E.g. imagine someone requiring a drowning person to agree to pay a million dollars to be rescued.
Increased profits are often "unearned" in that they don't stem from something like working harder or innovating. Encouraging innovation and hard work is one of the primary justifications given for capitalism.
Society's operation is often based on the assumption that things will be priced perfectly. E.g. no one would be able to retire if companies where able to perfectly match prices and pay.
The rich hurting the poor in order to become even more rich is considered immoral in almost all philosophies.