Newsflash: Life sucks anywhere when you're poor and uneducated.
And abundant evidence indicates that (most) corporations will do everything within their power to take advantage of this fact, unless very strongly regulated.
And abundant evidence indicates that (most) corporations will do everything within their power to take advantage of this fact, unless very strongly regulated.
In fact, they even have a name for this strategy:
Self improvement is fine and necessary and honorable and all, but ultimately living together in society is necessarily political.
Note also that a lot of what is taught in undergrad/MBA economics 101 distracts from that, and (even while aspiring to be value neutral) implicitly promotes a trust in markets and corporations that is naive and misguided.
James Kwak's book "Economism" is a nice antidote to that:
https://www.amazon.com/Economism-Bad-Economics-Rise-Inequali...
I think the pressure from consumers can be even stronger force than regulation. It can act faster and it is not so susceptible to lobbying and loopholes.