Here's a thought; do you want to rely on the goodwill of people you don't know, that live hundreds or thousands of miles away, to get up at 4am to farm and create food (a basic human need) for you?
Or do you want to rely on the profit motive? If not, why?
Life is a bit more nuanced than profit-motive vs charity. I'd guess most of the folks on HN work for a salary at a company. There isn't a ton of "profit-motive" in the work. You don't necessarily get more money if you do a better job. At least not reliably (it's up to the discretion of the company usually).
So if a lot of people are willing to do work for a salary, why wouldn't a farmer or landlord be willing to do work for a salary? Why does a landlord need a profit motive? Why does a farmer need a profit motive?
I don't think you can argue that landlords are more attentive because they receive profit over a salary.
Lets assume farmer refers not to a slave fieldhand working for a corporation but to an independent farmer who actually owns his own land on a critically endangered economic entity known as a "family farm".
Many family farms still left in the US at least are not profitable. They exist because their owners (foolishly?) are holding on to a dream of a farming lifestyle. The salaries are subsidized by federal price supports and things like family members working day jobs.
Farming that works economically is farms owned by large multinational corporations which employ slave labor.
The family farms owned by individuals who are doing things for a love of farming are on their last legs. Few left. Soon it will be none. Then it will be the corporate owned ones only.
This will be celebrated by those who have spent the last decades incessantly demeaning and insulting the small family farmers, claiming that they are vile despicable capitalists living on the labor of the common man. These anti-family farm advocates push society towards the inevitability of corporate dominance of all farming and its necessary reliance on slave labor.
Profit motive leads to more shelter being built. The same reason why you want food production for-profit.
Not everything works best with profit motive (eg, healthcare) but if you want affordable housing then maximizing profit motive will help produce more housing.
No, profit motive leads to more shelter being built for those who can afford it and everyone outside of that gets to live on the streets. See: Seattle.
> 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.
Because empirically, we have learned that the best system we have for distributing goods such as shelter, food, and clothing is a well regulated free market economy. It’s not perfect, but it is less terrible than anything else humans have tried.
Money, necessary to acquire food and medicine, is another basic human need. If you have something someone else needs more, it is their fundamental right to have it.
Or do you want to rely on the profit motive? If not, why?