The most profitable alt is one that you and all these others running around looking for it have not found yet.
Once you find it oh well time to move on as it won't be profitable anymore.
Slash-and-burn agriculture turned out not to be as effective in the long run as sustainable agriculture, crop rotation, heck a lot of innovations that happened since slash and burn was the best method known.
Might be similar with cryptocoins?
-MarkM-
I think the term "strip mining" better applies to multipool type profit seekers. They just mine to dump coins as fast as possible, hurting both the short-term and long-term prospects of the coin they strip-mined.