Free will

What the assumption of free will amounts to is a full renounce to any attempt to explain purposeful behavior as an effect of some material cause whatsoever. It is not a recognition, neither explicit nor implicit, that free will is un-caused. As long as a research program, for instance that of psychology, successfully bursts into the causes of purposeful behavior, it reveals free will as not really being such, it shatters it; not to speak of, say, the physiological study of the brain. Of course, these research programs are so humble that we will always have room for free will.

On the one side free will, i. e. purpose, can be interpreted as random and so, analyzed (in some, but clearly not the causal, aspects) through the methods of statistic inference. On the other side, it can be viewed as a spontaneous (this is, undesigned) order.

Starkey on institutions

"Almost all institutions are monarchical." David Starkey

Exceptions and randomness as lack of knowledge, not of cause

Exceptions are only apparent. They embody lack of knowledge not of cause. It is the same with randomness. A random event is an ultimately deterministic (caused) one, but we don't have a way to measure that cause so that we cannot forecast the outcome.

Pervading profits

There is not such a thing as a firm which doesn't maximize profit. When you apparently observe such a behavior, either you are not defining well who is the firm or you are not taking in account all the costly expenses or the incomes from the production of the good in question.