Profits And Losses...

---

Business can be a confusing area. Because there are just so many rules that need to be followed, and if care is not taken, the entire business could crumble. And then, even though it’s all followed religiously to the letter, there’s still no guarantee that it’ll work out. It’s just like a roll of dice; you can’t be fully sure that things will work out the way they should.

You could do everything, and your employees would be the ones chipping away at your company. You could get it right, and your customers could not be acting the way ideal customers should. Each company and market is unique to itself, and while there are general rules that guide them all, they also individually have their own rules that give them a slight better advantage, or disadvantage, than others.

When it comes to ethics and profits, it’s not far-fetched to assume that these two might never even be in the same question to begin with. Because if you’re willing to be ethical in business, you’d have to forgo some profits. And if you’re willing to gather as much profit as possible, you’d have no trouble doing unethical things.

The sad thing is that being unethical doesn’t mean being a criminal. You can be unethical within the confines of the law. As a business owner, the fallout will simply be between you and your customers. As a landlord, you can decide not to rent your house to people with shady sources of income, which could mean a dip in profits because such people might have lots of cash to throw your way. Ethics would demand that you only rent to law-abiding citizens, and most of them can’t spend money the same way criminals do.

The issue is, in the world today, many businesses don’t care much about ethics; they only care about profit. They just want to make money, that’s all. They don’t mind that the economy is insane and people’s earning capacity is not increasing. They simply want to take it all. And it’s painful!

This is one of the issues plaguing the real estate sector in Nigeria. They’re just full of scammers and thieves. Many of them would sell the same property to multiple individuals, just to get money. Others would give you land in areas that are different from the one you requested. And it’s also the reason rent is getting so high these days, and for what? The rooms are so small, and the buildings are all rickety. Yet, they demand millions for a year’s rent!

It’s no news that one of the major problems we all have in this country is fraudsters. Not just because of the crime they commit, but also because of business owners who build their businesses solely on catering to them. A lot of fraudsters buy and pay for things without caring about the price, just as a way to show off. And many business owners love this because they can hike their prices and be certain that the fraudsters would be able to afford it. In fact, many of them hope to be patronized by such guys; they don’t care about the honest earners who are just trying to make ends meet.

It can be one thing to allow criminals to patronize your business; everyone has the right to run their business how they see fit. I just think it’s cruel to use that as a yardstick to decide your customer base, thereby shutting out those who can’t afford to spend such huge amounts of money. It can be painful, because sometimes you’d hear the prices of certain things and you’d be shocked at how something so little can be so expensive.

Well, it is what it is. These are the issues we have to face. We have businessmen increasing prices with reckless abandon. I’ve heard that some policies are being put into place by the government to regulate issues like rent and pricing. Hopefully, that will put a stop to this madness. Because at this point, it’s all getting out of hand.

---

_{Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, I would love to know what you’re thinking. Till we meet in the next post.}

---

_{This post is inspired by the first topic of this week which is Profits And Ethics. Feel free to try it out.}

---

_{N.B: All images used in this post are mine. The thumbnail was designed using Canva.}

---