We welcomed the government’s announcement of a cap on profiteering from care home ownership, a subject we at CTP have been campaigning around throughout 2026. Alongside it came some positive noises about stemming such behaviour in the childcare provision so many families rely on, daily. Yet, the government is also raising the energy price cap (meaning yet more excessive profit for the energy and oil companies). In these confusing times, we ask: where is the line between good business and extractive profiteering?
There is nothing inherently wrong with profit. Even those of us who work in the ‘not-for-profit’ sector need to make a profit – or a ‘surplus’ each year – in order to pay fair wages, to re-invest it in our work and to keep enough in reserve for a ‘rainy day’. Profit is essential for good and sustainable business.
But where does the line fall, between ‘good business’, exploitation and extraction?
Big oil companies have profited exceptionally well from the current war in Iran. It has resulted in an estimated $30m an hour profit for them – whilst driving up the cost of almost everything for you and me. Whether it’s wars, or tariffs, heatwaves or financial crashes, we are told consumers must ‘pay the cost’, with higher prices or tumbling quality, but the companies themselves rarely experience even a blip in their exponentially rising profits. They are directly profiting from both death and destruction and from our ‘cost of living’ crisis.
Booming levels of directors’ pay and shareholder dividends are being recorded in sectors as diverse as water companies, care homes, housing developers and private healthcare companies, just when our rivers and seas are a danger to health, our young people can’t afford a roof over their heads and basic care and health services are in disarray.
The word ‘profit’ itself comes from the Latin: ‘to progress’, yet the relationship between profits and growing quality and access has been almost entirely severed.
This is where it’s important to focus on whether we are looking at profit ‘for‘ – or profit ‘from‘.
As we inexorably move away from small businesses rooted in and accountable to their communities, the focus in so many of the big businesses that take their place, is what they can make a profit from. Which sector can be best exploited for the greatest financial return?
Once they’d maximised profits from essential goods, and then luxury items, they turned their focus to the services we rely on day to day. Food, health, water, housing, care, education, transport, even sport and entertainment. How could they ‘buy into’ these services and strip out as many costs as possible (sold to us as ‘efficiency’) to reap more profit. Lower wages, reduce safety, minimise environmental protection, strip out investment and leverage borrowing. Once they own enough of these assets and services, they increase the prices year in year out, and ‘record profits’ soon become the norm. As Hettie O’Brien chronicles in her excellent book, The Asset Class.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has become a guaranteed pathway to profiteering.
But there is another way. And it’s not about eliminating profit. It’s about returning to a laser-like focus on what profit is for. Profit for who? Profit for what social benefit? Profit to deliver what sort of progress? Profit to re-invest in better wages, better services, better access for more people, better outcomes for our communities and our planet…
There is enough profit in the water companies to clean every river and revitalise our seas. Enough profit in our care services to pay care workers well and ensure our most vulnerable people are given the dignity and support they deserve. Enough profit in the energy companies to make fuel poverty a distant memory. Enough profit in the housing industry to give everyone a safe, affordable and healthy place to live.
‘Profit’ doesn’t need to be a dirty word. Profiteering from the basic needs of others – definitely does. Our economy is set up to favour the profiteers. It is designed to enable this siphoning off of our collective wealth and prosperity for the benefit of the few. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Centre for Thriving Places works week in, week out with cities, regions and communities across the UK to push back against these profiteering practices. We are tirelessly researching the depth and reach of this ‘extractive’ economy and its impact on all aspects of our lives. We are working with far-sighted leaders in governments, businesses, charities and service providers to re-write policy, re-design investment and commissioning, re-focus local planning – to grow the kinds of local economies that create a profit for the common good.
If you’d like help to reclaim YOUR local economy from the profiteering few – get in touch at hello@centreforthrivingplaces.org.
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