Your point can be strengthened, by noting that profit need not be monetary, but can also occur in trade. If one person is skilled at fishing (talented, practice

Your point can be strengthened, by noting that profit need not be monetary, but can also occur in trade. If one person is skilled at fishing (talented, practiced, and invested in equipment), and another is skilled at pottery, they can trade fish-for-cup, and both have profited, because they each have got something that would have cost them more time and effort if they can done it themselves. Division of labour, Adam Smith, etc. Of course, that fundamental is often obscured in today's mass market, and can in fact be lost, when people are don't purchase in their best interest, and are encouraged in this by advertising etc. And Adam Smith is often misapplied to justify it. You can even have a kind of profit without trade, as in when you invest by practicing skills, creating equipment and so on which leverages your many subsequent efforts. Even a cave man can do it (and did).