I agree, But if you don't take discount rate into account then...

I agree,

But if you don't take discount rate into account then you're doing your shareholders wrong. NPV (with discount) is how you calculate money productivity and how all the majors look at projects from a profitability perspective.

NPV is the only way to look at long-life projects and investments. Ofcourse in reality inflation will inflate both the costs and profit, such that the analysis is never correct anyway... but so is all economics from a predictive point of view. Too many assumptions.