I always thought that Drucker said it best: "Profit is the cost of doing business."
Businesses exist for a purpose: to provide goods and/or services to customers. They don't exist just to make money. You can make money in plenty of other ways and not have a business. (Think about a lottery winner or speculator.)
But if you want to keep doing business, you have to make money, and you have to make money over and above the cost of capital. Otherwise, you'll never be able to marshal the resources necessary to keep providing your goods and services.
I'm not entirely sure playing the lottery and speculating are such good ways of making money. Someone who's in it solely for the money is probably going to start a business before doing either of these things.
This opens up another topic that is equally interesting, which is the relationship between entrepreneurs and risk management.
My observation is that entrepreneurs are NOT risk takers. They are very much risk-averse. This is a strange comment but as an entrepreneur, I differentiate between taking risk and mitigating ambiguity.
I don't gamble and I don't play the lottery. I think doing so would be taking undue risk because I have absolutely no control of the outcome.
On the other hand, doing startup is not risk to me because I believe I can control the outcome. It is just that the outcome is somewhat ambiguous which I know how to mitigate.
I suppose if I take a step back, this is not unlike the difference between an amateur gambler and a professional gambler. If I know how to count cards, I won't think that I am taking risk neither.
Businesses exist for a purpose: to provide goods and/or services to customers. They don't exist just to make money. You can make money in plenty of other ways and not have a business. (Think about a lottery winner or speculator.)
But if you want to keep doing business, you have to make money, and you have to make money over and above the cost of capital. Otherwise, you'll never be able to marshal the resources necessary to keep providing your goods and services.