What about a company that happily sells guns and bombs to both sides in a Civil War? They are filling the needs of individuals to decimate society.

More specifically, profits are a side effect of meeting sufficient numbers of individuals' needs. It does not necessarily follow that meeting the needs of those individuals benefits society at large.

Profits are also a side effect of meeting needs today. It does not necessarily follow that meeting needs today benefits society in a meaningful way in the longer term.

For what it's worth, I think your implication is true. Clearly most companies create wealth and deliver benefit to society, it's that aggregate effect that makes capitalism the most successful system we know of under which to run a society.

But the reality is that it's entirely the other way around: companies do exist to profit their investors and it's the benefit to society that's the (usual, aggregate) side effect. It's not good, or bad, it's just a fact.

Profits are also a side effect of grabbing surplus value from their workers. Just sayin'

No, not really. If only it were that simple.

It's trivially true. A worker produces something and gets a fraction of their value paid back to them. They would not have been hired if it were not so.

That part is true, but that's not what you said. Getting profit from that surplus is something else entirely.

> profits are a side effect of meeting needs

It's the other way around.