There's a little more to it. If it was merely about getting all the profit you could out of land, there's be no sense capping a bay area neighborhood at single family home densities, when you could probably build a 25 story condo on each single family home lot and sell each story as its own luxury condo for the price of that 1930s single story california home that sits there today.
I think nimbyism just appeals to the monkey side of the brain we all have. If you are happy and surviving, there's probably millions of years of biological evolution in your behavior that's telling you to keep up what you are doing where you are. There's probably a side of your brain that subconsciously gets irritated at seeing more humans move into an area competing for resources with you, even if today that just means a parking spot at the grocery store and not an appreciable dent on game populations. Stuff like cities and dense living on top of many different "tribes" only happened within the last few thousand years, that's only like 50-100 generations and that's only considering those ancient cities that were around then, plenty of places have been rural for all of human history. Not nearly enough time to expect a significant amount of adaption, and that's only if there is a remarkably strong selective pressure favoring adaption.
I think nimbyism just appeals to the monkey side of the brain we all have. If you are happy and surviving, there's probably millions of years of biological evolution in your behavior that's telling you to keep up what you are doing where you are. There's probably a side of your brain that subconsciously gets irritated at seeing more humans move into an area competing for resources with you, even if today that just means a parking spot at the grocery store and not an appreciable dent on game populations. Stuff like cities and dense living on top of many different "tribes" only happened within the last few thousand years, that's only like 50-100 generations and that's only considering those ancient cities that were around then, plenty of places have been rural for all of human history. Not nearly enough time to expect a significant amount of adaption, and that's only if there is a remarkably strong selective pressure favoring adaption.