In our modern world, we think of profit and loss purely in financial terms but this is erroneous. Financial comparisons of Gain or Loss give us a method for comparing the economic value of such concepts, but confining the term profit or loss to only financial activities is an overly narrow way to understand the concept.

A Man who wins a game or solves a puzzle has made a profit. He has attempted to realise a goal and he has succeeded. With hindsight, he may decide that the achievement cost too much and that actually it wasn’t worth the effort, but that is often true of economic purchases also. The gain that we expected from some trinket, property or service may not have been worth the sacrifice, but at the time of the transaction the Actor believed that what he was to receive, was worth more than what he would pay.