I recently read Peter Leeson's paper, Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse, which argues that Somalia's government was so awful that anarchy was actually better in most of the ways we care about. It has an example of a profit-making enterprise with negative value:
Under government, a great deal of Somali production was military hardware that citizens did not consume. In fact, to the extent that this hardware was used to suppress the Somali population, this sizeable portion of pre-1991 GDP was actually negative value added from the perspective of citizens’ welfare
...
[Military spending] left few resources for investment in public goods, like education, health, or transportation infrastructure...[In 1990,] government spent less than one percent of GDP on economic and social services, while military and administration consumed 90 percent of the state’s total recurrent expenditure
So, weapons manufacturing for an evil regime seems like a candidate for effective malice.
Your conclusion is probably true. But your Leeson quote is comparing the percentage of GDP that goes to things he wants to the percentage of the state's recurrent expenditure that is military spending. Those numbers are not even enough to distinguish Barre from for example a government that just defends the people against external enemies and otherwise lets everyone handle their own affairs.
This is an offshoot of a thread I made earlier, but which wasn't eliciting the sort of responses I'd hoped for.
So let me pose a clearer question with less potential to get people on watchlists.
What legal ways of making a profit are the most anti-altruistic, the most damaging to society, the opposite of effective altruism in result.
I am using utility loosely. The answers need not be given from a utilitarian perspective at all, but instead merely deal with any means of making a profit that seems to you clearly wretched, and such that the world would be better if nobody participated in it.
I'd also like to emphasize that these things should be legal. There are some obviously wretched illegal businesses that would top the list otherwise. If something is legal but only in a particular jurisdiction, then you should only discuss it within the context of the jurisdiction where it is legal.
If it's a grey area, go for it, but extra points for society-harming enterprises definitely legal in both the letter an the spirit of the law.
This is NOT about whether the enterprise in question should be illegal, just whether it causes a net loss of utility (deal with counterfactuals however you see fit).