Dear Editor,

Avoidable catastrophes repetitively reveal how insatiable corporate greed will successfully override Government in order to practise dangerously low, if not no safety standards.

The world saw this most horrifically demonstrated with so many earthquake-shaken Turkish buildings collapsing on their human inhabitants.

Because of shoddy and regulation-breaking construction, countless lives were gratuitously lost due to big-business greed.

Meanwhile, the more that corporations make, all the more they want; it’s never enough.

Maximising profits at the expense of those with so much less, or nothing, will likely always be a significant part of the nature of the big business beast.

Still, there must be an imminent point at which the status quo can/will end up hurting big business’s own monetary interests.

One can imagine that a healthy, strong and large consumer base — and not just very wealthy consumers — are needed. Or could it be that the unlimited-profit objective/nature is 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.

Corporate CEOs will shrug their shoulders and defensively say their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. The shareholders, meanwhile, shrug their shoulders while defensively stating that they just collect the dividends and that the CEOs are the ones to make the moral and/or ethical decisions. But the buck stops somewhere.

Frank Sterle Jr

White Rock, BC

Canada

fgsjr2010@hotmail.com