Think about how material conditions in the region of the United States have changed in the last 100 years or the last 200 years. In 1492 this resource-rich area was inhabited by many fewer than the 250 million who live there today. Yet the pre-Columbian inhabitants could do no better than eke out a subsistence. The area could barely support a few million people then, but today it easily supports 250 million. The solution to this apparent paradox lies in the fact that, as Ayn Rand so often reminded us, man's basic tool of survival is reason.
Man is a creator.
That solution overthrows any notion of a conflict of interest between human beings. Every person, being equipped with a mind, is a potential problem solver and not just a consumer of resources. Thus, we should expect that more people will solve more problems, make more scientific discoveries, invent more things that make life better. That is exactly what happens. Nature provides a variety of stuff, but it comes with no instructions on what it is good for, if it is good for anything at all.