steadily
regular, even, and continuous in development, frequency, or intensity
growing
undergo natural development by increasing in size and changing physically; progress to maturity
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Following
Heimdall wrote: Aug 6th 2010 9:15 GMT
“Let’s focus instead on a more basic question: why does America have regulators?”
An easy one. Corporations exist for one reason and one reason only: to maximize shareholder profit.
And towards this goal, corporations have historically shown that almost nothing is beneath them. If there is any possibility of privatizing the profit (for shareholders) and socializing the risks (for everyone else), they will do so.
Now, some might argue that corporations exist to produce products and services to improve the lives of customers, and to be sure, this does happen. But it’s incidental to the profit motive.
If corporations can make additional profit by scamming consumers, providing inferior products, polluting the environment, accidentally killing it’s employees (or consumers), they do so, and do so with gusto.
Hence regulation.
DrRGGibbs wrote: Aug 6th 2010 9:44 GMT
If a corporation in its need to outperform the competition chooses a policy that is ethically lacking but profitable, then its competitors are forced to follow the same unethical behavior or be driven out of business.
Thus the role of the regulator is to set standards to enforce ethical behavior.
An example: US banks offer “free” checking accounts using the business model that they will impose hefty fees on consumer mistakes, thus punishing the poorer customers with low balances. If regulators limited such fees to something related to the banks’ actual costs then the banks would have to charge real fees for the checking account services they provide.
But as soon as one bank offered “free” checking they all had to do the same to stay competitive.
"http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/08/internet_neutrality
Doesn’t our system work so well?
