The Standard Model tells us that if an enterprise is profitable, it is good.
From this it inevitably follows that if it cannot support itself, it must be bad. Well, this may be true in the long run, but the bill collector comes to the door on the first of the month, regardless of what we want to believe.

The economy does not consist of an empty void sparsely populated by little bustling centers of disconnected activity. It is a complex tapestry of interacting elements, none existing in isolation from the others. A change in one instantly propagates throughout the system, and the consequences of economic decisions cascade throughout the society like ripples, with totaly unforeseen consequences. As in any entropic system, it requires a constant input of energy (work, or more specifically, human labor) to reverse decline and contribute to growth, or even stability.

But even in the most degenerate and decaying processes, there will always exist slowly growing eddies and vortices, standing waves of localized growth that feed on the rapidly accellerating and increasing chaos around them, and adding to that disorder by feeding on the dissipated energy of the system as a whole.

I have always argued that in nature there is a reason for everything but a purpose to nothing. But a human society is not nature, it is a completely artificial construct, one that does have a purpose, and that as thinking beings we must play a role in how that system evolves. The purpose of collective human activity is to promote the collective human welfare. We are cooperative social animals, not solitary predators or isolated parasites. Neither does anyone have the right to see us as docile herbivores, ripe for predation. Our social structures must be designed to contribute to collective social health, not provide opportunities and freedom of action to those that can seize control of their local environment without thought as to their effect on the rest of the social universe. Individual freedom is essential , but it is destructive unless we all share in it equally. Freedom based on the manipulation and exploitation of others, even if it is not deliberate, must be rejected.

The problem is that the system is too complex for any individual or philosophy to be able to conduct this design. The scholar in his garret, the executive in his suite, the bureacrat at his desk or the revolutionary at the barricades, is not qualified to make these kind of fundamental design decisions. And we should be especially wary of those designers who tend to benefit personally by the adoption of their own designs by the community as a whole.

The only way we can direct the combined intelligence of the species into constructing a commonwealth that benefits the commonwealth, not just a small part of it, is to let it evolve naturally. We may not be able to figure out individually how things should be organized, but we are certainly qualified to know collectively when things are not working.
This is where we are in our history right now.

It seems inconceivable that the mass intelligence of a civilization can lead to social progress and that we should rely instead on the wisdom and industry of a few exceptional individuals. But the lesson of history is one of progress and improvement, perhaps marred by error, setbacks and blind alleys, but in general an improvement and perfection which has not been the result of one philosophy or ideology or heroic character. Men and ideas have played a role, but it is the people, the human community as a whole, that has made progress not only possible, but inevitable.

The blueprint for this societal evolution has been slowly and cumulatively worked on for centuries, we are all familiar with our own American contributions, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, so I call your attention to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the cornerstone of the French Revolution.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp

The Revolution may have been seized by ideologues and collapsed into dictatorship and terror, but the cat was let out of the bag in Europe and not all the forces of reaction and conservatism were able to put it back in. Read the Declaration, does it not now seem to be just reason, common sense, human decency? How could any modern man possibly object to these self-evident principles? But at the time it was bitterly resisted as the work of the devil, as a radical and unworkable ideal, a blatant attack on the forces of law and order and God, and an undermining of property rights and the natural social order. We know now it was just inconvenient for those who benefited by the way things were. The arguments of the forces of reaction today are eerily similar.