....for the way business is becoming ever more ruthless and uncaring
is...paradoxically......because companies are now owned by a large
number of people (ie shareholders) who care about ONLY one thing.....
profit.
Many of us walk around feeling that we are reasonably moral and ethical
people in our dealings with the rest of society. What we don't realise
is that when we put our money into stocks......what we are inadvertently
doing is hiring somebody to go and do the f*cking over for us.
Once upon a time there used to be identifiable owners - some good some bad - who you could hold responsible for certain deeds.
Now this is no longer clear because we have depersonalized ownership. The owners are faceless wonders who don't even bother to vote at annual meetings. At best companies
are likely to behave only as well (or as badly) as the collective demands. I say at best, because into this managerial vacuum rush people with a boundless greed (they are addicts just like the majority). They line each others nests with quid-pro quo positions on the board ..... paying hundreds of thousands
of dollars for a sinecure.

So I agree with you...its "US" and we are doing it to ourselves.
The irony is that much of the wealth (and therefore share ownership) is still
in the hands of the few. The participation of the rest of us serves to legitimize behavior which is otherwise unconscionable.
Things won't get better until we stop thinking about how much we made last year
and start asking ourselves "is my neighbor okay?". What is totally absent is people asking themselves...."do I really *deserve* this".
DESERVE is a dirty word. How can it be any other way when we have state-sponsored gambling holding out the promise of untold millions, a tax system which is basically a game of hide-the-pea and a legal system with the capacity to make someone rich (or poor) in a New-York minute.