Profit maximization and marginalism

If firms are strict profit maximizers, they will make decisions in a "marginal" way. The entrepreneur will perform the conceptual experiment of adjusting those variables that can be controlled until it is impossible to increase profits further. This involves, say, looking at the incremental, or "marginal," profit obtainable from producing one more unit of output, or at the additional profit available from hiring one more laborer. As long as this incremental profit is positive, the extra output will be produced or the extra laborer will be hired. When the incremental profit of an activity becomes zero, the entrepeneur has pushed that activity far enough, and it would not be profitable to go further. We will explore the consequences of this assumption by using increasingly sophisticated mathematics.