>(Surely it's profitability rather than demand that matters most to
>capitalism.)
That's one bit of orthodox theory that never changes. Back in the 80s, there was a lot of talk about how Japanese capital was sacrificing profit to gain market share. By some estimates, the rate of return on new investment in Japan in the late 1980s was negative, and Japan lost money on a lot of its foreign investments. For a while it looked like it was working, but the old verities finally asserted themselves.
Doug