Thank you for this thought-provoking post. I loved your clear explanation of the important difference between profit-seeking and rent-seeking. The insurance and vaccination mandates are interesting examples as both seem to illustrate rent-seeking in action, but both also have an intended social benefit. (I'm thinking a purer example of rent-seeking might be the petro industries lobbying for massive oil and gas subsidies.)

Echoing @curtiscolwell's comment, the vaccination mandate intends to improve overall public health and the insurance mandate seeks to spread the cost of insurance more evenly. Putting aside the debate about whether or not government should play a role in these concerns, there is a least some rationale for arguing these mandates are beneficial to society irrespective of any financial benefits to insurance and pharma corporations.

Where things get dicey is that the big insurance and pharma companies have a clear vested financial interest in these mandates. And given the out-sized influence corporations have in our government, it becomes very difficult to tease apart their social and financial motives. In fact, the presence of social benefits can serve as a sort of cloak, concealing their true motives and allowing them to sanctimoniously adopt postures of altruism while padding their bottom-lines.

In the larger context, I am perhaps less willing than you to grant profit-seeking behavior a pass. Pure profit-maximization (even without the abuses of rent-seeking) tends to establish financial profit as the sole measure of corporate success -- with disastrous results on natural resources and polarization of wealth. By contrast, the triple bottom-line approaches (profit, people and planet) adopted by Public Benefit Corporations and B-Corps offer a more holistic framework for well-being.