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Oscar_Cunningham comments on Open thread, September 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The thought occurred to me whilst I was thinking about the allegation that America invaded Iraq in order to steal its oil. This would be trading lives for money, hence the comparison to efficient charities.
Doing some quick internet research, it seems that the gains from oil come nowhere near to even cancelling out the epic financial cost of the war. So the war was a bad idea even by the silly criteria in my original post.
Furthermore it seems that ethical investment is just as profitable as unethical investment. [1] [2] [3] (How can this be true!? Am I misreading these?) So in fact it turns out to be sort of hard to be a "reverse charity".
As I recall, the formulation was usually that it was American oil companies which were to blame. It's true that the war has been epicly bad for America (what are we at now, a net total of $4t in costs?), but that's not the same thing as showing it was bad for the oil companies ('privatize the gains, socialize the losses'), and even if it was shown that ex post it has been a loss for the oil companies (they got shut out by the Kurds and Iraqi federal government, basically, didn't they?), that doesn't show that they weren't expecting gains or were irrational in expecting gains.
That depends on the people with whom you are discussing the issue. The kind of people who use the word geopolitics a lot usually say that it's about more than the interest of the companies.
It's also worth noting that the Iraq war did produce an immediate increase in the price of oil which increased the profits of the oil companies.