You can do far far worse than naive optimizing for profit. Optimizing for *REPORTED* profit.
People learn very quickly to manipulate the reporting, modeling, and accounting.
Just less than two decades ago we had the entire financial system lending massive amounts of money to the worst possible borrowers and REPORTING massive profits.
People learn very quickly to manipulate the reporting, modeling, and accounting.
Just less than two decades ago we had the entire financial system lending massive amounts of money to the worst possible borrowers and REPORTING massive profits.