With the exception of regressive products like drugs and junk food, making a profit from a product or service is a good sign that you are helping people and improving their lives. Otherwise they wouldn't pay you for it. You've hit on the reason why capitalism has successfully raised billions out of poverty over the last century.
So if I gain a monopoly on a nation's water supply, and then charge the population exorbitant but enormously profitable prices for a litre of water, I must be "helping people and improving their lives" because without my activities they'd literally die?
Water certainly can't be in the category of "regressive products".
People paying someone for things they need isn't an indication that the seller is a moral/ethical actor. It's just an indication that they own valuable goods, and ownership has really nothing to do with personal ethics, unless you subscribe to a seriously flawed ethical belief system like Prosperity Theology.
Ok right, read that now. So you’ve added further exceptions, like no monopolies, no cronyism, and even more exceptions could be added, for example no market externalities.
I feel like if we kept going with the exceptions to find a form of theoretical capitalism with no exploitation only mutual benefit from exchange we’d end in a weird, not really capitalist place.
Without competition it's easy to end up in a situation where a monopoly can accrue too much power and exploit their customers or their workforce. With sufficient economic freedom competition can arise naturally. Unfortunately when a company becomes very powerful You will start to see behaviors like rent-seeking, regulatory capture, and cronyism. These artificially raise the barriers to entry for plucky startups. This is more a reflection of poor or corrupt governance than capitalism though.
