

To me the part that seems the most wasteful is wasting the time of badly paid workers when you could just prepare food for yourself instead, and to a lesser extent the waste of your money going to a corporation, and the waste of real estate. I don’t think things like water use and extra plastic/cardboard trash associated with food is all that impactful or worth worrying about. That said I personally avoid going out to eat except in the rare cases when it is an unavoidable social requirement, so a few times a year at most.
But our numbers show a strong correlation between profit and negative externalities, so as long as we’re causing harm we should be making money. Maybe we should start focusing research on even more dangerous monsters.