When you go shopping and see two items for sale that seem nearly identical, do you buy the cheaper one?

If you have long term savings do you want it to earn interest?

The desire to optimize for profit exists at all levels among all participants in the economy. Everyone does it. We are the system and the system is us.

Regulations are usually the only way to fix these things because there are game theoretic effects in play. If your company spends more to clean up and others don’t, you lose… because people buy cheaper products and invest in firms with higher profit margins. The only way out we’ve found is to simultaneously compel everyone. But that doesn’t remove the incentive.