From what I read so far, when you blow up a ship, you can get some of the stuff that were in their cargo or ore holds based on whether they blew up with the ship or not. Is there anything else you get? Referring specifically to pvp.
Or is the joy of blowing up player owned miners and haulers purely just blowing things up and no monetary isk value?
You can often recover mining lasers and modules that can are worth more than you lose from your gank ship. Occasionally, there will be bling mining drones that you can scoop.
But mostly, highsec ganking is about the zen of the attack along with the small chance of getting a good crybaby chat or evemail train going. Nothing quite compares to having a grown man cry about losing his venture in highsec.
lol, ic
Tears and Hate Mail
Xeux… i love treating guys like you to an eye full of obscenities… but keep in mind now that free-play is here… it very well could be jail-bait telling you to suck their D these days. Who the hell knows… the environment of this game has always been “the most” toxic of any game i’ve played since 1983. With free-play, i’m kinda surprised there are not lawsuits due to age and content.
but ya, i’m happy to call pirates assholes cause yes… your killing for sport not for riches in this game. LOL
Free play or not, Eve online has a pegi-12 rating, and you have to be 13 to play, even before alpha clones
so steam should not have allowed my kid to install it… i should check if he found the age setting in his account. LMAO
So… the type of “farming” you are most likely referring to is called “suicide ganking.”
(see: the act of blowing up a player’s ship before being blown up by the NPC police)
Generally, this is done for the following reasons:
For money
The modules / cargo of a ship has a 50/50 chance drop dropping as loot. The idea here is to blow up a ship whose modules / cargo will cover the cost of the ganking ship (which is automatically lost due to the NPC “crime” mechanics) and gain a profit.
Economic Warfare
Every action in the game is in competition with another player. Even mining.
The more asteroids people mine, the less rocks in space there are to mine.
When there are too many minerals on the market, the less value they have because there are more options to choose from (at cheaper prices).
So some of miners may take it upon themselves to either contract someone to blow up other miners or do it themselves.
The “cost-benefit” of this is less obvious and hard to quantify as it is using an action (or many) to elicit intangible responses for tangible results.
For giggles
Not everyone wants to crush their enemies.
Not everyone wants to see their enemies driven before them.
Some simply want to hear the lamentations of the women. 
(see also: There is no “price tag” for these people… they just want to have a laugh)
I would add a fourth item: for roleplay/storytelling purposes. Some folks were attracted to EVE for the opportunity to play the outlaw, the black hat, the bad guy. Others wish to be able to say they control a part of EVE, even in high-sec space. Yet others want to share their tales of defending their Empires by fighting back against capsuleers who steal from and murder their fellow citizens - even as they steal from their fellow capsuleers.
Not long ago I cleared out some piles of extra modules and other items looted from wrecks of people I killed. Sold for several billions. There is definitely an economic value to PVP if you kill more in ISK value than you lose.
Primarily the latter: FUN FUN FUN. Any isk from PvP is an added bonus. The only exceptions to this might be organised, for-profit, hauler ganking and whaling or killing of extremely expensive PvE/mission running ships. But even with those activities most people who do them do them for fun and I feel confident in saying that the vast, vast majority of people are paying to PvP, not profiting from it.
Mercenary work used to be an exception too but that’s another playstyle that has massively declined (Noir are the only people I know that supposedly still do it full time) and, similarly to all other PvP, profit is not necessarily the primary goal. Winning, building/maintaining a reputation and getting content all probably come first.
I think most suicide gankers finally do it for profit. Kill something you can loot more than you lose ships to kill. This is about hauler killing around the usual pipes like Uedama, Urlen, Perimeter, Jita.
Poor mans hauler ganking setup needs two accounts, a Tornado (scans and ganks) and a hauler to scoop and escape. Add an extra scan account, extra Tornados for more DPS and a middleman to become professional.
The most resource you need is time. You sit there for hours scanning cargo of passing by haulers until you see the jackpot.
killing miners is mostly for giggles. although some do fit some silly expensive items, so there can be profit sometimes.
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