Dervish said
Although like most people I may subconsciously have bias towards one thing or another, I do try to keep an open mind about both sides of an issue. Personally, the sentiment of "it's just business" rather disgusts me and I don't think profit should ever trump civil, personal, environmental, or other ethical concerns. I have no problems with businesses being successful, but I do think there needs to be controls in place to monitor that they are keeping to ethical practices and meeting environmental criteria. I understand that in a lot of cases, it's not perfect and you can't do much to avoid a certain process from being a harmful pollutant, but you can take steps to limit it and create incentives towards a transition to less harmful practices. I can fully respect your personal situation, and I know I got very fucking lucky with the circumstances of my life. You hear all the time about how costly it is to be poor and how hard it is to actually break free of poverty. I think a lot of people don't realize that people aren't there by choice and are certainly trying to break out of that cycle. For instance, if you live in a city, housing is usually very expensive, and what little pay you make often goes to rent. If you live in the suburbs or the country, your options for transportation are limited. If you can afford a car, you have to pay way more money to upkeep the damn thing if you bought it cheaply used because it is going to fail, and so on. Back before I got my current job, I worked at a shitty, bottom barrel retail job and was trying to live in apartment with two room mates, where we split the rent three ways. I eventually had to move back home because I couldn't afford to live like that. I had to pay probably 400-800 dollars a year fixing something on my car, having health problems caused me to have quite a few sick days which you don't get paid for, and a bunch of other factors made it literally impossible to save money to afford better living conditions. It was a struggle just to break even every month, and I was glad I was able to move back with my parents, because I was able to get my life back on track there. A lot of people don't have that option, so what do they do? The world isn't a perfect place, so instead of trying to change everything at once, it's a lot easier to focus on the things that can be fixed first.
You're exactly right it's extremely hard to break free from poverty. It's why almost my entire family is poor. I have a couple wealthy aunts, but that's only because they married into wealthy families. It has turned them into complete arrogant snobs though. Anyway, I don't feel a need to pour out my entire life story here so I will just say it makes me feel a bit better when somebody finally shows sympathy. It's way too often poor people are blamed for their situation. In my case that couldn't be further from the truth since I was born into a poor family.
With that said, I suppose it can give you a bit of an idea of why I generally distrust most wealthy people, CEO's especially. Small business owners I have less issue with, however. I know most small business owners are just trying to survive too, but due to the nature of capitalism it's rare for small businesses to survive without being forced to expand. Of course that expansion happens at the expense of others.