Reply #3: Profits come 1st, 2nd, and 3rd; consumer protection brings up the rear.

[JohnyCanuck]

Unregulated Capitalism Harms The Country These Six Ways

by Rev. Bill McGinnis

Unregulated profit-seeking corporations cannot be trusted to protect the Public, because their main objective is to make profits, not to be a do-gooder for the Public. Whenever profit-making conflicts with the Public interest, profit-making wins! Thus they become Predators on the Public, not Protectors of the Public.

This is not a radical idea, but an obvious fact, if you think about it. Profit-seeking corporations exist to make a profit, and the more profit, the better. Anything which increases profits is good for them; and anything which decreases profits is bad. So they try to do whatever is necessary to make profits. This is the essence of Laissez-faire Capitalism: that profit-seeking corporations should be left alone to do whatever they choose to do in order to make profits.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Unregulated-Capitalism-Har-by-Rev-Bill-McGinnis-090303-799.html

For those with broadband, watch this Youtube video in which two investigative journalists working at a Fox station explain how they were fired for refusing orders to change a report on the potential dangers to consumers of drinking milk contaminated with Monsanto's artificial bovine growth hormone product. After Monsanto threatened their station and Fox News with lawsuits and a withdrawal of advertising dollars, management had stalled putting the report on the air and then ordered them to falsify the report to make it less damaging to Monsanto. Eventually the two reporters were fired when they wouldn't comply.