This view--not that you hold it, but that it exists--frustrates the hell out of me.

"We don't like being a customer of the company that clubs baby seals but our customers would leave us if we didn't use the company that clubs baby seals so I guess we should pay up for some more clubs."

It's a pretty glaring example that "free markets" usually aren't, and often unrelated to government intervention. You have information, you have agency, and you have the thing that the other party wants (money), yet you don't feel free to move away from a supplier who you clearly view as unsuitable[0] because that supplier has gained a market position so dominant through exploiting others.

0 - If I am reading too much into your comment, I apologize and don't mean to put words into your mouth.

I may not like that my electric utility burns coal, but I like my lights to work more. You can’t sit around worrying about every single imperfection in the world and accomplish much of anything.

Not just that, the fact of the matter you and I don't have very much of an effect on these things. We can't choose how our energy is produced, and we don't use anywhere near as much energy as a company like Amazon. This is where government regulations must come into play.

> We can't choose how our energy is produced

Well, you can buy it from one of those 'green energy' companies... I dislike the marketing a lot (as though it isn't fungible and you are somehow getting different, greener electricity piped to you than your neighbour) but it does work in the sense that you can shift the needle by buying your (essentially just as not-green as if you paid (less to) anyone else) electricity from someone who has whatever commitment to fund green projects or buy the 'green wholesale' stuff or however it works.

(Not that I do that.)

It's not as doom and gloom as you think. I've worked a few companies that colocated at a datacenters, bought some refurbished hardware slapped Xen and Proxmox on it and grew their business to $50mil ARR. It's much much cheaper than you think and avoiding large AWS bills was the primary motivation for doing it.

The budget for one company I worked at's infra -- 4 full racks in two datacenters with power, network, and a dedicated site-to-site between them was $200k over five years plus $3k/mo ongoing costs. The upfront cost was tiny tiny -- they started with a router, two switches and 4 used supermicro blades. That lasted them the first 4 years of their startup. It took two FTEs to manage the full infra and provide a PaaS style thing to the developers.

There are many more things to be competitive in other than price. Plenty of business thrive outside of the Amazon/AWS economy. If you can't find a way to change your behavior on the basis of your beliefs, then the value of that behavior is more important than your beliefs. That is nothing to be embarrassed about, but don't be delusional and think that you have no other choice.