KP:
the author doesn't ignore that, necessarily. long-term profit IS still profit.
There is no individual/self profit in dying to defend liberty, -- for instance.
And as DC argues:
[no one is] that keen to die, but that they would rather risk death than live as slaves.
We are pretty much right back to that point again.
127 by Dead Corpse
ah. that gets into whether the human capacity for tribal affiliation and symbolic valuation should be considered "stupid"
that might be beyond the scope of this paper.
IMHO, dying for the liberty of your 'tribe' isn't stupid, but it sure isn't very profitable either, in an individual sense. -- Which is the subject of this paper. True?
not sure it is all that simple.
individuals might consider they profit by dying for a cause or purpose they consider more important than their own lives - if they value their family or nation more than they value themselves, dying for the preservation of these higher-value entities constitutes profit.
the paper also fails to factor in the calculus of risk v. benefit.
sometimes people incur loss in a calculated gamble to gain profit. This does not make the gamble stupid, just a failure.
Profit?
"... for what doth it profiteth a man, to gain the whole world, and lose his soul?"
One way of translating that would be to ask, "What has a man gained, if he loses his life in saving the entire world?" That's not what the passage means, but I like to be flexible.
Dying ain't much of a way to make a living, but you won't get to Heaven in a little rowboat.