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Comment by yequalsx | Hacker News Reader

But sometimes the value added is not morally obtained. Western countries derive a lot of value from resource rich countries that are impoverished. Unfortunately that value often times comes at the expense of great environmental and social damage done to these countries.

Chasing profits for the sake of profit without regard to morality is bad. As a famous saying goes, the love of money is the root of all evil. It's not true in every case but the spirit of the adage is true and society ought not to forget this.

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I disagree with you on so many levels it would be hard to know where to start. Yours is the type of comment I referenced as woolly thinking that comes from people declaring that profits aren't really necessary.

Of course environmental degradation is a poor outcome for everyone involved. But that has nothing to do with making profits. An unprofitable enterprise is more likely to be damaging the environment than a profitable one.

Do you have any data to back up the claim that unprofitable enterprises are more likely to be damaging to the environment than profitable ones? I doubt very much that you can find such data. I'm open minded enough to consider such data.

As an example of my doubt that such data can be found I'll note that oil wells and pipelines in Nigeria are much more likely to leak crude than pipelines in the U.S. Regulations are in place precisely because in the absence of such regulations companies will not engage in environmentally safe operations. Countries that lack a decent regulatory governing structure are the ones that have the most environmental damage from mining and oil extraction.

I didn't say anything about profit being necessary or unnecessary. I said that profit without considering moral implications is bad.

No I don't have any data, because no such data would exist or would be very hard to collate.

I can look at the environmental condition and record of any heavily controlled economy or region, or one where nobody has ever really made a profit anywhere. Chernobyl is a grand example. Google is another - they have the profits in order to implement best-practice environmental standards for their operations and buildings, to sponsor world-changing initiatives. Many things that wouldn't be possible without healthy corporate profits. A struggling search engine company wouldn't be trying to power their datacentres with renewable energy or doing many of their other things.

I've done enough travel to know the filthiest, most polluted places are those where profitable companies don't exist.

Your example of Nigeria just shows that countries mired in poverty and lack of productivity and wealth lack the resources and ability to implement strong environmental controls.

Any oil company involved with a leaking pipeline is not going to be as profitable as one with a pipeline that doesn't leak.

I personally know people who work in the oil industry in developing nations. The popular image of people like this is of cowboys with no regard for the environment, yet they, and the companies they work for, work hard to get things right. But it's not always possible in a corrupt environment where rewards don't go necessarily to those that work the hardest, but those who have the connections.

there are few experts if any on what is moral profit (is a doctor making money of sick people moral? ). look around you. everything you see and use is obtained from earth. there is a cost to mining earth this way and it is not reserved to rich countries.e.g ghost towns in US caused by fracking. beyond this , your statement is too generic to even repudiate.

The comment I made is hardly disputable unless you think that pursing profit is always and everywhere a good thing. I don't know anyone who can't find an example of where the pursuit of profit was evil.

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