Those things go hand in hand. Ideally, you can't make money without improving human life in exchange. Sure, any political system will include a bit of corruption and rent-seeking, but by-and-large, it's exactly the profit motive that has improved the human condition.
> billions_ of people continue to do that
So it's all pointless? Because we haven't achieved a paradise of endless bliss where no one suffers, we shouldn't bother to try to make things better? As a society we are pursuing both faster smartphones and eradication of diseases. It's really hard to predict which technologies will be the most fruitful. The cell phone, despite being invented to solve first-world problems, has had a huge impact on the third world. It's probably done more to improve the quality of human life than any charitable program ever!
[edit] > the idea that production, sales, whatever must continuously expand.
Production must expand as long as population continues to expand. The projection is that population will peak around mid-century and begin to come down again. At that point, production might well level off or begin to decline as well.