[patja]

What do you think about tobacco companies? Or payday lenders?

I understand some would do something highly profitable but morally questionable and then donate the profits to a more socially productive firm. Is that what you are thinking? The end justifies the means?

[daniel-s]

Regarding Tobacco: they're providing a product that people want to consume. I'm classifying fraud with violence. So if a tobacco company lies, pretending that their products are healthy or whatever, that's evil. But a rational human can decide that they want to indulge in something now at the cost of possible consequences in the future. That you or others may not have such a strong time preference, i.e. choose current indulgences at a higher future cost, is no reason to project your values on others or to say that selling tobacco is not providing that consumer the benefit of enjoying a nicotine hit.

Not 100% familiar with payday lenders, but I'm assuming short term, very high interest rate loans. In principle access to credit is useful to people to meet immediate needs. It is the case for any loan that saving up, rather than spending now and incurring the cost of interest would be cheaper. Lending people money lets them enjoy houses, cars, or other trinkets earlier than they could otherwise obtain them. The added benefit comes at the cost of paying interest. If someone does that over shorter timeframes at higher interest doesn't change the value that lending brings.

What we can say rationally about the above is that consumers chose to indulge in the above services, that they gave up their valuable cash in exchange for the benefits that the above services brought them.

[jpetso]

Would you equate satisfying the (real or perceived) needs of individuals with social benefit? Are there situations where you could view the profit-generating satisfaction of one person's needs as a net negative to the sum of all individuals' needs?

[patja]

Both examples feature large long-term negative externalities that are usually picked up in one way or another by the taxpayer.

[daniel-s]

Here the fault is not the buyer or seller but the government. If you didn't financially penalise the smoker for smoking, he would have a disincentive to smoke. However, the government might decide to subsidise healthcare, thereby taking away the financial penalty of smoking. The government now takes away the financial burden of smoking and encourages people to smoke. I don't think people should smoke, which is why I would object to the government subsidising it.

If people want to indulge their very immediate needs at the future cost to their hip-pocket or health that's Thier indulgence and is what they rationally decided will make them happy. I think it's immoral to take money from taxpayers to subsidise behaviour that has harmful long-term effects.