This morning on Radio 4’s Today programme I heard John Humphrys giving a grilling – sorry, interview – to Mohammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who has just introduced the concept of ‘social business’.

Yunus described the idea thus: “It’s a non-loss, non-dividend company set up for a social purpose... It aims at doing good to others, not to yourself.” He went on to describe an existing social business set up by his foundation and the European dairy company Danone, which makes yoghurt at low prices for Indian street children. A puzzled Humphrys pressed him on the point: “You say this is a business. But it’s not... people put their money into business in order to create profit. This is just a charity, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely not,” Yunus said. “If you produce something and give it away, that becomes charity. With a social business, you cover your costs.”

If I was being cynical, I’d say that the current state of the print industry hovers somewhere between Yunus’s definition of a charity and a social business. Seen in this light, how many printers are either a social business (simply covering their costs) or making something and giving it away (a charity)?

I was treated this week to an apocalyptic view of the print industry’s future, courtesy of a print finisher based in Lancashire. The managing director of the company, which has been family-owned and run since its inception in 1992, was sounding off about – you guessed it – print management companies. Print managers are parasitic, in his opinion, and slowly draining the life-blood of the host industry that feeds them. “They’ve turned into bullies who harass printers into printing top-quality work for stupid prices,” the finisher said. “Printers are no longer allowed to make money on their own work. God knows how we’re all going to survive.”

This particular trade finisher has found himself a niche that’s protected not only his margins, but his robust attitude to the dire straits in which the print industry currently finds itself. “A long time ago I decided I wasn’t going to be a busy fool,” he said. “I don’t just fill the factory with work that barely covers my costs. I charge the right amount of money for the job, and I take the right amount of time to produce it well. And anyone who doesn’t like it can just –”  (at this point I’ll draw a discreet veil over his suggestion; the upshot was that the print buyer should take his work elsewhere). “I won’t just work to keep on working,” he said. “I want to make a profit.”

Sobering thoughts. But are they accurate? Two print outfits I spoke to in the last week think they are – unfortunately. One was another trade finisher, based in Burnley, who by his own reckoning worked “two to three times harder in 2007 to make about 30% less than in 1997.” The other was an entrepreneur who set up a series of B3 print shops across the country, setting out about ten years ago. His original price list – for business stationery printed on a single-colour press – shows the same prices as now, for the identical work in four process colours. Inflation has been low over the past decade, but still that’s quite a feat.

Print seems to be veering irrevocably towards Yunus’s ‘social business’ model, and, in the words of the Lancashire trade finisher, “God knows how we’re all going to survive”.