Sorry, you're right. That's what I took away from your claim that profit encodes a signal for ethicality. I still am not sure I agree with the idea that profit represents a consensus for whether or not something is ethical. Specifically _because_ money is involved it seems like the equation is muddied.

In the food production case, more ethical choices often come with a higher price tag. E.g., I believe that cage-free eggs are more ethical, but when I was broke I would buy the cheaper eggs because I was financially incentivized to do something I found less ethical, if only in a small way. And even now, if I am in a rush to buy eggs and the store is out of cage-free, I'll still make the less-ethical decision to do what is cheaper (in terms of energy). I wouldn't say that people's ethics are determined by how much money they have, but rather people may believe that one product option is more ethical than another, but considerations about money and convenience make them sometimes behave less ethically than they would without those constraints.