Well, at the end of the day, when our hypothetical shirker goes to cash-in their pocket-full of moonbeams for their dinner, they will discover that it does matter what others think of their profits....

Paying someone else for food isn't the only way to get a dinner. The person who in your opinion has “blown his day playing in the sun” may have been foraging or some similar thing. We can each envision whatever scenario we want ... doesn’t make it the only way it could play out.

I don't see what difference the tallying interval makes.

I thought my example made it clear the difference varying tallying intervals can make.

I think perhaps the "dual natures" you are thinking of are different than what I had in mind.

Well, since you didn’t provide any illumination into what was in your mind I had no effing idea what you were thinking. I certainly wasn’t thinking memes and genes—that phrase often refers to “mind–body” dualities in psychology and that context made absolutely no sense here.

In the short-term we could look at whether our share of the worlds resources has increased or declined. For a young person we might look at whether they have become better positioned to capture a good share of those resources; or less so.

Thank you for the helpful examples. They are indeed objective ... but they also seem to assume a perspective I don’t share.

In the long run we are all dead: and profit comes down to whether our genes and/or memes are increasing their share of their respective pools, or not.

That seems to me to be a very narrow and unfulfilling way of defining profit.

I see that The Shadow’s comment was up when you posted the one to which I am currently replying; have you nothing to say in response to his thoughts?