You're off to a bad start when you're saying is it any less ethical than this other horribly unethical thing. Bitcoin is awful, too! And is it better? I'm not sure. You realize that these physical goods take energy AND materials to produce, right? And those materials take a lot of energy to mine, refine, and turn into something as complex as an SSD (and then that thing gets packaged and shipped across the world by planes, trains, ships and trucks), right?Is it any different/better/worse than using tons of electricity that comes from burning oil or horribly sooty coal to power bitcoin miners and the pollution that comes with it that statistically causes many deaths per year?
I'm not even sure it's not worse than Bitcoin. They're all terrible. Bitcoin uses tons of energy directly. Chia will eventually use maybe as much by using tons of energy indirectly AND destroying lots of non-recycable goods in the process AND causing large shortages which will harm people in other ways downstream. Bitcoin ASICs are also likely useless outside Bitcoin, so it is also destroying some other resources that way. It's really just all horrible and everyone participating to make a buck is really horrible.