[milaresearcher]

I strongly disagree with your statement that profit is the only objectective, rational measure of social impact.

It would be great if the balance of human and environmental well-being produced by an organization could be captured as such, but I feel it is often much more complicated.

It is clear that a poor child has a lower ability to pay for goods and services than a rich child. Does this mean that goods and services sold to the rich one with a hefty profit margin are more "beneficial to society" than when sold to the poor one at cost?

[daniel-s]

First, those are two different things. The first is a business selling a product for profit, the second is a charity: giving or subsidising food to a kid.

It's impossible to know how much benefit anyone gets from food. Maybe the rich kid barely notices the food because he lives in abundance, maybe it's his favourite food, maybe the poor kid is starving and desperate, maybe he's overweight and the food is doing him harm, maybe it's the rich kid's favourite food but his brain reacts less favourably to that than the other kid when eating his least favoured food.

The only thing that can be reasoned about any of the above was that rich kid's parents wanted to pay more money for the food than what the stuff going into it cost. The food producer created something more valuable than what he started with. That is the only conclusion that you can objectively reason about from the above.