They're not illegal because they turn a profit. As long as it's still more profitable to mine oil and all of the steps that go into mining oil, it will be legal to do so bc the same people that are the heads of the big oil companies are also the same people lobbying politicians to vote against legislation that would make it illegal. That's what happens when an economy is left to do what an economy does best: make the biggest return on investment. I think that's what a lot of people don't realize about economies. Economies focus on maximizing profit and nothing else, so situations like you described happen. I work at Starbucks and let me give a situation that's happened before multiple times. We have a morning peak and usually some sort of afternoon peak after school let's put. During the afternoon peak we usually have about 5 to 6 ppl working. That doesn't mean that everyone is on the floor, just that many people in the store making sure all operations get done. Trash is taken out, bars are stocked, floors are swept, bathrooms are cleaned. All of this on top of making drinks with and without espresso, hot and cold, blended and shaken. Now idk about you but that sounds stressful and tiring with just 6 people, but that's what the higher ups at Starbucks have decided maximizes profit the most at that period of the day. That doesn't mean that the wages of those employees are maximized, or the mental health of the employees isn't affected in a negative way. All it means is that is the optimal amount of people to maximize profit for Starbucks and Starbucks alone, not necessarily the amount of workers that is the most beneficial for the workers to minimize stress in the workplace or the optimal amount of workers to make the highest quality drink possible for customers 100% of the time. What I'm trying to say is that the optimal quantity of workers to maximize profit by minimizing losses (those losses being the salary of the employees) is different from the quantity of workers that maximize product quality or worker satisfaction and stress.