I think a less cynical way to phrase your (correct) idea is that people love the promise of profit as an incentive to create innovation. It's not a fully self c

I think a less cynical way to phrase your (correct) idea is that people love the promise of profit as an incentive to create innovation. It's not a fully self consistent system. But the end goal isn't profit imo, it's innovation, and competition via promise of profit is a way to efficiently allocate resources to innovate. For what it's worth, I think the general arc of antitrust rulings bend toward the ideal over time and it's a fine enough way to deal with the self inconsistency.