Continuing the thought:
The entire Capitalistic endeavor is predicated upon the understanding that man is primarily concerned with fulfilling his own needs. Here is how it goes: I need money. Desperately. My life and those of my closest loved ones depends on it. As Abraham Maslow famously taught, the most basic and critical needs must first be met before thinking about more elevated needs [such as safety, love/belonging, esteem and self actualization]. These are physiological needs which are biological requirements for human survival, e.g. air, food, drink, shelter, clothing, warmth and sleep [sexual relations are on the list but I don't think that it is as fundamental as air food and drink. There have been plenty of people in history who lived long lives but were never sexually intimate with another person. The same can't be said about people who didn't have air to breathe or food to eat]. If these needs are not satisfied the human body cannot function optimally. Maslow considered physiological needs the most important as all the other needs become secondary until these needs are met. Without money there is no food or shelter etc. So how am I going to get money? Capitalism offers a solution - find a product or service that people want and offer it to them on condition that they will give you money. If they will not part with their money then you will withhold the product or service and they will find themselves lacking what they want. The more valuable your service - the more people will be willing to pay for it. So if I sell a pencil for a thousand dollars then nobody will buy it. But if I sell a smartphone for 300 dollars, I will sell hundreds of millions. Go into smartphones and not into expensive pencils....
But why won't people just give me money because I exist and need it? Because that is not the way we work. We all feel innately that people should earn their keep. [This is related to the notion of נהמא דכיסופא - bread of embarrassment. Hashem didn't want us to feel that we are being given an undeserved gift so He put us here to EARN our reward]. We ALSO don't want to part with our money unless we will get something of commensurate value in return. So if I offer you a service or product - you will be willing to part with your money if you feel it is worth your while.
The field of marketing is essentially the science of how to get people to give you their money. Saying "please give us your money, we really need it", doesn't work. At least in large sums. So instead you are offered shoes or a vacation in exchange. The chochma of marketing is getting into people's heads and figuring out how to convince them to give away their money. The basic approach is to convince to the people that it will be in their OWN BEST INTERESTS to give away their money. It even works this way with tzedaka campaigns. They won't say "give money to our organization because it is the right thing to do and you MUST do the right thing". Why not? Isn't it true? Isn't it the right thing to give? We all believe that!! But that doesn't work. Instead, the pitch is something like "Give us 100 dollars, feel good that you helped those poor handicapped kids [look at their pictures. Isn't that sad? Don't YOU feel better that you gave??!] and enter a raffle which might win you a trip to Israel for Pesach or a new washing machine". Now the odds of you winning are far far less than 1 percent but they don't tell you that. If they go into the odds then you won't give your money. Instead, they publicize the names of the winners. Ahhhh, you think, people won. I wish that were me. Maybe next time. I often think that they should print the names of all the people who DIDN'T win, but there is not enough space in the magazine for that....
So again - this is NOT a critique of human beings. This is how we were made. I often think that Hashem understands, for example, our very powerful attraction to some members of the opposite gender. He is the One who created it. He just asks that we control it. But the very attraction is part of our intrinsic nature and that should not and cannot be changed. Man, by nature, is a self centered being. He can [almost?] never completely remove himself from the picture.
We have to use this understanding to help us become better people. To try to elevate ourselves as much as possible to do things for others with a minimum of ulterior motives and self interests. We also have to appreciate how deeply connected we are to our own welfare and use that to benefit mankind. One example [of many] would be to think of a product or service that enhances people's lives and then provide it with the intention of making people's lives more pleasurable while knowing that what we offer will also enable us to live and thrive.
