I'm 100% with you on the ethics, but I gotta ask: would this behavior be different under a different economic system? The only 2 reasons I can see it being stopped are either a government enforced regulation, or a public push against it, and neither of these are linked to economics at all.
I have to agree. I'm a critic of capitalism but the Soviet Union and others showed us that a (more) planned economy is just as capable of environmental and ecological atrocities as American industry is.
An ethics of stewardship and care has to be fought for either way. In both instances indigenous rights (and the landcare ethics that came with them) were trampled on in the name of "progress"