I'm not understanding, could you clarify? Thx. Oops, I think we're too far down the rabbit hole for "reply" to work. I'll take a stab at answering but forgive me if I'm answering the wrong question.

When a business is losing money, paying employees is a charity. When the business is making a great profit and decides that it could make even more by hurting/laying off some employees, that is a choice with moral implications.

When there is plenty of ice cream bars for everyone but the first guy who arrives at the cafeteria grabs all of them out of the freezer and proceed to sell them to everyone who comes later, the first guy didn't earn them. He didn't actually increase the amount of ice cream. He only captured the value.

It is possible to not grab every single ice cream bar especially when you have more than you can ever eat. People and companies do this all the time. As a businessman, I don't find it necessary to screw every other party in a transaction in order to feel successful.

None of this addresses the question. We have the highest standard of living in history because businesses relentlessly increased productivity, in both good and bad years, and this eliminated unneeded low value jobs. It also creates more valuable new jobs.

If they hadn't done so, 95% of Americans would still be doing brutal farm labor.