> Well, we had food and shelter before we had profit motives

Did we? The Hobbesian original condition is one of the strongest "profit" motives around. Natural selection is unsentimental and unforgiving. This idea of distributing things according to "need" is a very recent novelty.

It existed, but was very unequally distributed. And that’s why so many people starved and died from natural disasters.

I don’t think profit margin typically makes things possible in a binary manner. I think it just makes them more efficient.