Profit survey

[asterroc]

1) What do you think is the most profitable industry or organization? By this, I mean if you counted the profits they made and divided by the money they spent, who do you think gives the biggest number?

2) What do you think is the most profitable physical product? You can't say "information," but you could say "textbooks." Music on iTunes doesn't count, but physical music CDs do.

Who knows (or cares) what the right answers are, I am just curious as to people's reasons. And whether anyone will answer me at all. :-P

Comments

[tikva.livejournal.com]

Porn is, in fact, a ridiculously profitable industry, I'm sure. Generalize to "the sex industry", if you wish.

The most profitable physical product? Damned if I know.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm under the impression that many sex workers, including in the porn industry are taken advantage of, much like sweatshop labor. I wonder if it'd be as profitable if the sex workers formed unions... :-P

[q10.livejournal.com]

wasn't there a movie about that?

don't know if the flick is any good - just remember there being a large number of signs promoting a showing at Swarthmore a few years back.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Huh. I wonder if the SEIU approved of the movie. :)

[q10.livejournal.com]

i could actually think about this and come up with intelligent answers, but it's more fun to say the first things that pop into my head.

so i'm going to go with ‘organized religion’ for (1) and ‘soft drinks’ for (2).

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I put organized religion high up there too - they take in a lot of "charity" donations, but don't "have" to spend too much of them to upkeep the buildings and employees. Though, I could argue that their expenses of good works would be a drain.

Yeah, I realized I could look it up too, and decided not too. And then jethereal had to go and *SPOILER WARNING* spoil it for me. :-P But that only counts traditional industries, as far as I know. I doubt things like religion or aid work would be included.

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

Well oil definately has the biggest profits overall, but the return on money spend I am not sure about. Depends on how you figure it. A 50,000 bpd heavy oil upgrading or dcl plant costs about $2b to make. The operation and feeds cost about $35/barrel, with oil going for $60+/barrel, thats a nearly 2:1 profit, and it breaks even in a year.
Of course agriculture makes alot of money because other than fertalizers and some illegal immigrants to do harvesting/field maintance, you have little overhead.
But I think oil still wins in the physical product area. Although software makes alot too. Or maybe specialty chemicals.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I expect the software and music industries make a decent amount of profit, since the majority of their "product" is not a physical item that needs to be built. But I woudln't rank them that high on the second question because of that very same reason.

Many natural resources do require a bundle of money to process before you get to an end product - sand into silicon chips is an example that jethereal mentioned to me.