Now apples may be a perishable good , but for things like housing , there is no hurry to sell . Demand goes up and down in cycles , (unless there is something wrong with the neighbourhood , which is a problem with the builders planning) , so the builder just has to wait for the right time .. until the demand goes up again , and he can sell at a reasonable price , and minimize his loss .

“Profit is not related to or dependent on the amount of capital employed by the entrepreneur.”
I think we have not fully understood Mises statement . It means that just by putting in more capital , we cannot get (or ensure profits ) . Profit comes from the foresight and good judgement of the entrepreneur . But once he makes the judgement , he can multiply his profits by putting in more capital .
Take a gambler who bets on a sports team to win . By his judgement and his foresight he decided his team is a sure bet to win , so he puts in money for them . He will profit for sure , but more money he puts in , more he can multiply his winnings .
Same for an entrepreneur , more he trusts his judgement , and mre he risks , more he can profit . So the total profit made is proportional to the investment , but is not caused just by the investment

My American friend got really pissed when I tried to defend the so-called ‘Robber Barons’ of 19th century. Robber barons is a derogatory name given to the richest industrialist of 19th Century America, (J P Morgon, Rockafeller, Andrew Carnegie etc etc). He hates them because he claims Robber Barons were exploiting the workers, but not taking care of them(what he does is sees them through contemporary American eyes, he didn’t say it, but he literally imagined them being evil for not providing health benefits to workers. IN 19th CENTURY!). My point was simple, I wish in India in 19th century we had our own robber barons. 19th century Indians weren’t better than 19th century Americans.

First up, entrepeneurs in the real world don’t produce until the ‘break-even’ point. They produce only if there are profits which is above the going rate of interest. So, there is nothing like the break even point in the real world which the mainstream economics text you read suggests.

Second, there is always disequilibrium in an economy because consumer preferences constantly change, and a few entrepreneurial errors are always unavoidable. So there is relative underproduction or overproduction. Hence there will ALWAYS be profits and losses to be made in an economy.

I suggest you read this part of my article: “People argue overproduction everywhere could lead to losses everywhere completely wiping out profits from the economy. But there is no need to worry, the market has answers again. An overall overproduction everywhere in the economy still doesn’t set the “disequilibrium” that exists between the preferred quantities of various goods into equilibrium. Here one needs to understand that people’s needs are humongous and can never be satisfied. The market can only try to provide the proportionate quantities of various commodities according to the consumers’ preferences. Profits (and losses) are nothing but the signals that guide producers to adopt to the consumers’ preferences, and they never would cease to exist.”

Your whole subsequent paragraph is nothing but a non sequitur.  Other than that it merely repeats the ‘a priori’ commonplace that profits vary with business conditions.   It does reveal however your petty shareholder point of view with its focus on the consumer, beloved of modern ‘economic science’.   This point of view of course,  with its lack of  any need “to understand the production process” and its confidence that it need only “have a basic understanding of human action through a priori reasoning,” to guarantee its ”infinite certainty” knows nothing of the relationship between the production of means of production and the production of consumer goods.  As a consequence it is bound to be impressed with the doctrine that on the one hand denies crises and on the other asserts them with such gems of ‘a priori’ method as, “There is nothing “normal” in profits and there can never be an “equilibrium” with regard to them. Profit and loss are, on the contrary, always a phenomenon of a deviation from “normalcy,” of changes unforeseen by the majority, and of a “disequilibrium.”

So what then is this “normalcy” from which “profit and loss are… always a phenomenon of deviation.”?  Well clearly it can only be a condition of neither profit nor loss, i.e., of breaking even.  Cold comfort indeed for our real world capitalists the “majority” of whom are quite content to be “in disequalibrium” so long as it is on the profit side for most of the time.  Or are you seriously suggesting along with Mises that “the majority” of capitalists are satisfied to simply break even?

An economist does not have to visit each and every factory and screw through  entrepreneurial brains to understand the production process. All that he has to do is to have a basic understanding of human action through a priori reasoning, and when the conclusion is derived from the right premises the conclusion can be taken as right with infinite certainty.

While you were interested enough to read the first line of Mises’ quote, you probably didn’t want to read the next line which reads “Capital does not “beget” profit”

Mises does not say that when you invest a higher capital in a rapidly developing sector you won’t do any better than a guy who invested lesser capital than you did in the same sector. What Mises really says is, just because you invested a higher Capital does not mean you are assured of profits. An entrepreneur has to choose the right business (where consumers’ demand has not been satisfied yet) to invest in, to deserve profits. A guy who chose the right sector and invested a smaller capital than you could do better than you who invested a higher capital in a sector where consumers’ demand has been satisfied by the market already. That is, anticipation of consumer demand is what gives you profits (primarily), not the amount of capital you invest.

To understand this it’s necessary to put the textbook down and visit a manufacturer.  No one intentionally resorts to overproduction.  But practically all production has varied time cycles.  One product may take e.g. three months to come to market, another a year and so on.  There is nothing to prevent production initiated when things are going well being ready for market just at the point that the boom has run its course.  Thus, the homebuilders in the US were confident that the units they were building right up to the crash would find a market.  And this is even before the much longer cycles involved in the machine building industry are considered.  New entrants to any sphere of production, and by definition there are always such while the market is expanding, must begin by setting up the production facility.  What happens if the crash arrives even before the first run begins?  The machine builders have in effect overproduced since the capitalist who bought the setup from them on 120 days or whatever will not now be able to pay up.

The problem with modern economics teaching is that everything is viewed from the point of view of its monetary representation and thus the facts of production are never in mind.  The gentlemen in the ivory towers would never dream of dirtying their hands in the mundane world of actual production.

As for von Mises nonsense:

“Profit is not related to or dependent on the amount of capital employed by the entrepreneur.”

Oh Really?  That will explain then why every corporation expresses its annual profit as a percentage of its total capital, i.e., earnings per share.  And it would be some capitalist indeed who didn’t know that making an outlay on a machine (i.e., increasing the amount of capital) that was capable of twice the output with the same amount of labour would lead to an increase of profits.  If it didn’t, he wouldn’t.

But then no doubt as an ‘economist’ you have never been within a hundred miles of the actual process of production.
   

with increased efficiency, time and other resources can be diverted to other avenues, maybe towards other products. alternatively, mebbe they cud even use less of those resources, thus reducing the cost of production.

why would anyone produce unless they were sure that their produce will be bought by someone?