... I think this guy is forgetting that in order to make 'profit', he'll need customers to sell wares to. You can't really make profit off of dead people, unless you're the lowest of the low and literally profit off of dead people.
Honestly alot of this is failure of authors and writes to distinguish corporate and singular business practices(i'm saying this as someone who thinks capitalism is the best we got when it comes to financial systems btw, even if there's alot i don't like about it), corporate is usually shareholder based with the ceo literally being hired by the shareholders, hence why they can be super cruel with some of their decisions because after all, the ceo is just "doing their job" where as singular businesses (commonly called mom and pop, but even valve corporation fits this to a extent) are owned by a very few people and as such can be far more lax with certain rules for the better good, hence why "mom and pop" companies that get big enough tend to be much hardier than corporations in some ways, changing course is much easier for them.
In the aurora company's case this would fall into the latter, hence it makes little sense for the old man to be so unbending on such a task simply because the long term profits of the "word of mouth" of their good deed would likely even if it cost them more in the long run, ensure longtime customers based solely on their history of "good deeds", you don't need the 1 customer that spends alot once, you need return customers that trust your brand, thus yes the old man being so unbending on this would in fact be idiocy, that said remember how japan treated the merchant class until the meiji restoration, they were effectively treated with contempt.