>>189079, >>189080, >>189081, >>189082, >>189083, >>189084, >>189085, >>189086, >>189087, >>189088, >>189089, >>189090, >>189091, >>189092, >>189093
People see needs (including wants), which are "ecological niches," and fill them usefully, abundantly, and not in excess all because the incentives direct them to do this and not differently or more or less. And it's not magic.
But wait, there's more!
Ecosystems do not operate on a model of cooperation. Sure, some things are symbiotic with one another, but overall, the law is actually competition. This is because nature is ruthless and individuals are ultimately the units. The same is true of societies, which are mostly made of people who don't know or care about each other except in the weird abstract sense that doesn't motivate a lot of behavior, especially sensible behavior.
The profit motive also encourages competition. Let's look at the numbers from above. You can make the thing for $5 (including the worth of your own time and effort) and want to sell them for $10. I can make them for $5 too and am willing to sell them for $8, taking just $3 per unit. You're about to experience a lot of pressure to lower your prices or make your product better to justify the greater cost. Now we have lower costs and product improvement being incentivized by competition for profit. (Just like faster bees get more nectar or whatever.)
The profit motive actually encourages, again, with no central planning, finding the ideal cost of goods and services while also encouraging people to differentiate, innovate, and improve their products. If you can make a fundamentally better product than I can for $6 a unit instead of my $5, I can sell my cheaper one for $8 at $3 profit per unit and you can sell yours for $10 at $4 per unit, and we are now competing in a differentiated market instead of directly. This increases the total abundance of the entire society by offering more choices to more people. It arises because the profit motive offers more than one (prosocial) way to deal with market competition.
So then there's even more. Profit unlocks a law of economic efficiency called "the law of comparative advantage," which is just the claim that people will fill the economic niches most suited to their talents, abilities, and temperaments given the opportunity to do so. In essence, the law says that people in free economic situations will gravitate toward where they have the greatest relative advantage over their peers in producing or serving. That is, people will do what they're good at (and fill different niches as a result).
Think about it: you're not going to be inclined to do something you're bad at if you can figure out how to serve others and make a profit from something you're good at. Why? First, your own personal interests and happiness, I suppose, which is only first because you're not that hungry. Second, which is first when you are that hungry, because you can make a larger profit per unit effort when you do things you're good at (that people want).
Profit therefore incentivizes a natural sorting in the economy that moves people to the places where they are most valuable. It isn't perfect, and not everyone is the most happy there, but the incentive structure constructed by profit is toward getting everyone in their most useful role, subject to some logistical constraints like locality. Moving everyone toward their most valuable role is a huge benefit of the profit motive.
But profit incentivizes the other end of the deal too. It moves other people to where they're willing to fill niches that need to be filled (sometimes because it's their most useful option): work like cleanup, janitorial, hard and dangerous jobs, etc. It's the same exact force based on the same exact foundation: profit.
Profit is not just the glue that holds society together, then, it's the lubricant that keeps it moving and the fuel that drives its activity. It's pretty amazing.
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