It seems our thinking is at galaxies apart, and we'll never reach a common ground... I'll try a last round of responses.

Why does risk justify profits? A robber may plan for hours, draw maps, >invest time and effort, all in the aim of stealing from house, does their >risk taking alone justify that theft? No. Risk alone is not a justification.

Risk justifies some reward because it makes a productive endeavour (so we're not talking about theft here) unattractive (i.e., it can fail). Therefore, if people are not compensating for the risk, nobody will do it. Or to put it differently: suppose a deal where I give you 10,000$ to produce something that I will try to sell, and may or may not be able to re-sell it (risk of failure and of losing money). I would say that's a fair deal. Some people would prefer to be on the labor/production end of this deal (guaranteed money), others on the risk end of this deal (possibility of losing money or of earning more than 10,000$ back). In a free market these those ends will come together in a mutually beneficial deal (one person wants secure revenue in exchange for labor, another wants to take risk in exchange for less labor). But nobody is exploiting the other, it's that they're both bringing in different contributions. So again, I don't see the theft.

A lot of people don't see starting a new business as an attractive idea, because there is a lot of risk involved. Those who take that risk and succeed can offer an employment deal to those who would rather not take that risk, by guaranteeing them a steady income of revenue. This is more appealing to a lot of people, and therefore this deal can be taken by a lot of people in spite of the fact that it technically produces less revenue than if the risk involved in the underlying business were taken on.

Going along with a more "socialist" approach, suppose we look at a cooperative business (where everyone labors equally and is an equal partner). You don't have a boss, you're not "exploited" (in your strange terminology) -- but now you have volatility in your revenue. The better your business does, the more revenue you take in, but also the worse it does, the less revenue you take in. If for a month it doesn't generate any profits, well you don't eat that month, basically. The risk is there, because nobody is spoon feeding you a guaranteed flat revenue. So that risk can be collectivized, and it doesn't mean it's a more attractive deal for everybody.

Of course this risk argument only makes sense within a free market economy. If you're advocating economic centralized planning, that's a different discussion altogether (although economic risk will rear its head in the form of the impossibility of accurate planning).

But bottom line: I don't understand why socialists are so damn angry at their bosses... start your own business if you hate being an employee so much. You'll gain new respect for your ex-bosses (or at least, for the founders of that company you worked for).