Rich companies are totally jerks.

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A comment made me realize about something:

Anyone reading that could be forgiven if they think that the sole purpose of businesses these days is to make money.

Welcome to the world of publicly listed companies on the share market.

Shareholder's needs to see large profits and big dividends overrides employee wages.

Marketforces apply (as usual), if the sector is cashed up then employers who offer higher wages will attract better people. When that happens wages go up from competitors to attract better employees.

There is a balance on the corporate side, influenced by economic Darwinism -- the most economic, effective, and efficient companies usually survive, while the rest fall by the wayside.

Sadly, there are people who believe that employment is a right, not a privilege.  True, people have the right to seek employment, but unless they already qualify for the position the want, they are not likely to be granted the privilege of occupying that position. Make no mistake: the position belongs to the employer, not the employee, and the employer is well within its rights to either dismiss the employee from that position, or to eliminate the position entirely, thus making the employee redundant.

That's business, kid.  Employers have the right to grant the privilege of employment, and to set the qualifications for those whom they would employ.

Deregulated capitalism fails to deal with vicious cycles such as this and that's why it only succeeds on paper.

This is literally capitalism, and what studies of socialism have studied to address for a very long time. Under strict capitalism the only job a business has is to make money, and everything it does along the lines of making a mission statement, investing in staff and building goodwill, is all in service of a company making the most money. This is basic stuff if you have studied business.

Again, noted by the forefathers of socialism is that left alone capitalism will eat itself alive as you have people and businesses hoard all the wealth to themselves, while giving as little to the people that actually keep it turning, employees turned customers.

This is how it is ridiculous when people treat companies not only as legal entities but as entities like a human where health, happiness and lives are really at risk.

In economics human life has no value other than what it can do for that given organization or more importantly its bottom line. If a robot can do it better and has no HR cost then the robot is better. Similarly if you can pay someone a particularly low wage you pay them that low wage because it's the going rate.

I think a big chunk of not just the tendency but the lack of freedom to do otherwise is the public equity model we have and how many things there are in place to deal with companies who are undervalued or not optimized in every way. It's also clear that we need to get really serious about not having economic systems dictate one's right to live, particularly that if or when they do they'll mangle human values badly enough to ratchet the whole culture toward sociopathy generation by generation.