[ashark]

I can't be the only person (red state-raised American, even!) to have had serious difficulty reconciling Business, as She is Practiced—including exactly what you mention—with the basic ideas of fairness and justice we're all immersed in from birth. The whole thing, top to bottom, makes me feel pretty icky, and it's only that everyone else acts like it's OK that keeps me operating in ordinary society (which is, I'm pretty sure, a substantial moral failing on my part)