Corporate Greed

[Nadeon]

I read and hear a lot of appologetics and explanations for the current climate of Corporate Profit Taking. Everything from "...they have a right to make a profit..." to "it's just business". At what point is the line drawn between "just business" and harmful practices? I call BS on the appologetics; call it what it really is, GREED!
Whatever happened to the ideals of being responsible and giving back to the community and the world at large. When did "I got mine" become an acceptable substitute for those ideals?
The wholesale rape of the economy (pick your country) by market price manipulation through destroying competition (not innovation), is mind numbing. One can see it in virtually every sort of good or service from Medical supplys and drugs to game consoles. A quick web search on heart stents to Ipods yields a pretty uniform price point across many sectors, irrespective of the average wage in those sectors. And they say Government regulation is a bad thing?!
Take the recent report of Time Warner doing a test study of tiered billing in Texas for high bandwidth users of Road Runner. What a crock! First let's create an illusionary problem, (slow speeds caused by high bandwidth users), create a bad guy, (bandwidth hogs), and the solution is? Why we can increase your speed there, average internet user, by charging them more! It's not fair to you that a few are hogging the bandwidth is it?
The reality is that TW out promoted their ability and desire to invest in equipment capable of handling an increased customer base of high speed internet users. So instead of investing profits already earned in improving and exppanding their network, they need to generate more profit by targeting "high bandwidth users" for the same crappy infrastructure. The real eyeopener will be if those new profits are actually used to improve the network. Sounds more like a way to force "high bandwidth users" to go elsewhere so they can maintain the status quo. It's comical that within the same month that story broke, they announced highspeed HBO on demand over Road Runner in Wisconsin. Now, does that make everybody a "high bandwidth user"? I don't know about you, but I really enjoy being treated like a moron!

[Kal]

But lets not forget that if they DO increce there network bandwith they can't go around screming that the internet is doomed due to the hihgh usage and that its about to 'Burst at the seams'.
Cooperate greed is killing us all, slowley but surely the a##holes at the top are scooping it all up. you know if the stock market was perfectley stable noone would make or loose any money there, so its in the investors best interests for it to be unstable, I bet if you look at this recent stock market 'crisis' and somewhere down the line someone will have made money from it.
the funny thing is also that none of it is real money, they all trade in USD and if the conspiracy theorys are to be believed then the US economy only has atmost 1/10th the acctual asset for the currency thats in circulation (or being horded buy some cooperate nonce as the case may be) thats the reality of a debt baced economy and we have that too in england but not quite so recklessley inflated.
I think I drifted off topic abit there, but never mind, same can-o-beans at the end of the day it all comes from the same ideal. This is my first post here aswell btw hope you liked it :-D

[Theo World's Leading]

One of the problems is, of course, is that the role of business is only to make money. In fact, the only legal mandate of a company is to increase and maximise shareholder return and value. I'm not saying that's right - but that's the truth. Actually, I'm saying it's wrong, as it's precisely that which drives corporate behaviour; largely "screw the people, let's get the money". But until companies are regulated in a different way (and, in the main, regulation has decreased rather than increased) I can't see any of this stuff changing.