Corporate greed suppressing the common man

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Not surprisingly, all 72 deaths in London’s Grenfell Tower inferno were avoidable.

It really does seem there’s no human(e) or moral accountability when big profit is involved; nor can there be a sufficiently guilty conscience if the malpractice is continued, business as usual. ‘We are a capitalist nation, after all’, the self-justification may go.

Then, such big businesses can get, or are getting, unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting concentrated ownership.

Still, there must be a point at which corporate greed thus practised will end up hurting big business’s own monetary interests. Or is the unlimited-profit objective/nature somehow irresistible? It brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.

One can see corporate officers shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom line and interests. And the shareholders also shrug their shoulders while defensively stating they just collect the dividends, and that the big bosses are the ones to make the moral and ethical decisions.

A very large and growing populace is increasingly too overworked, tired, worried and even angry about food and housing unaffordability, thus insecurity for themselves or their family – largely because of insufficient income – to criticise or boycott big business/industry for the societal damage it needlessly causes or allows, particularly when not immediately observable.

Indeed, so very many people, perhaps an all-time-high percentage, have to choose between which necessities of life they can afford.

Nevertheless, the more that such corporations make, all the more they want – nay, need – to make next quarterly. It’s never enough, yet the corporate news organisations, which make up virtually all of Western mainstream news media, will implicitly or explicitly celebrate their successful greed [aka ‘stock market gains’].

FRANK STERLE JR

White Rock, B.C.

Canada