Their business model has been to undercut and extinguish their competition for as long as they’ve been around. The ‘good’ you talk about is about controlling the market and leaving you with no choice as they’ve already largely done with your ‘nicer stuff’. Workers will be shit-canned without a second thought if they realize their ai/robot dreams. Drugs will become more expensive again once they capture the market.
The world depends on everyone voting with their wallets despite the inconvenience. You don’t have to be perfect, just make some changes. Pay more and support your small local businesses whenever possible.
The amount of power shareholders hold over every major (American) enterprise isn’t talked about in a way that presents a clear problem between increasingly expensive and shitty services, layoffs, anti-worker practices, political corruption and these shareholder groups. C-suite are part of this group but they’re also afraid of removal via hostile board takeovers and so easily justify acquiescing to shareholder demands. Perhaps it’s because the same investors hold the same sway over (American) media with the added benefit of using it to brand themselves as exceptional leaders. Lots to untangle there…