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I can't tell if you're trolling or just naive, but negative externalities exist everywhere. A ton of people are getting wealthy providing American taxpayers th

I can't tell if you're trolling or just naive, but negative externalities exist everywhere. A ton of people are getting wealthy providing American taxpayers the "valuable" service of for profit prisons and border detention facilities, Russian taxpayers the "valuable" service of foreign election interference, British taxpayers the "valuable" service of EU trade negotiations, Chinese taxpayers the "valuable" service of total surveillance .. And of course in the private sector there's client change denial, GHG emissions ("clean coal"), the opioid crisis, medical bankruptcies, data breaches, propaganda, lobbyists, ... It's in fact incredibly easy to see why "people" value "bad" things - because many people don't see the same things as bad.

BurningFrog 7y ago
That people value different things is an important insight. It's the fundamental reason why trade creates wealth, for example. We agree that people can acquire wealth in ways that hurt others. I think that's different from saying the wealth itself is bad, but that's perhaps splitting hairs. Crimes and externalities are real, but they're also very manageable with good legislation, and I think all experience is that the enormous accumulation of wealth since the Industrial Revolution has been the best thing that ever happened. I don't let the minor imperfections distract from the awesome big picture!