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by savingsPossible 2140 days ago
This is an interesting perspective, that I sometimes have as well.

But you did miss the important nuance of the externalities as another post also comments.

And you did list subsidies, but some subsidies are hard to notice.

Cars, for example, are heavily subsidised (think of road maintenance+the rent of all that space) and cause negative externalities (noise, pollution and congestion).

So it is more than possible to make a profit and not be socially beneficial (I think that cars are a good example, but we can disagree on that, they stand mostly as an example of subsidies and externalities, the balance of good and harm is harder to access).