In a market with perfect competition there are no profits.
I hope you can see that that claim doesn't fit the observed evidence. Gas stations somehow generate enough profits to stay in business despite the fact that they're competing to sell something that's an indistinguishable commodity.
Now, in the special case where the marginal cost of production is very low and you're selling a commodity it is true that competition destroys profits. Like if there are two people selling txt files of The Prince neither is going to make much money (that's why we have copyright). But we're talking about rare earth minerals here and those have a substantial cost of production with a corresponding upward slowing supply curve and I assure you that the people mining minerals are making a profit without having a monopoly.
"a substantial cost of production" is often a barrier of entry exploited via a monopoly, whether in the form of superior patetended technology, exclusive production agreements, government subsidy, a distribution cartel, etc, etc.
Are gas stations making profit off the gas or is that often a lost leader for high margin snack sales? I've heard that stations make nothing off gas sales.
Copyright is a government supported distribution monopoly.
I hope you can see that that claim doesn't fit the observed evidence. Gas stations somehow generate enough profits to stay in business despite the fact that they're competing to sell something that's an indistinguishable commodity.
Now, in the special case where the marginal cost of production is very low and you're selling a commodity it is true that competition destroys profits. Like if there are two people selling txt files of The Prince neither is going to make much money (that's why we have copyright). But we're talking about rare earth minerals here and those have a substantial cost of production with a corresponding upward slowing supply curve and I assure you that the people mining minerals are making a profit without having a monopoly.