| There are two fundamental problems here. One is that the customer can't easily discern between a good company and an evil company without doing business with them. Once they hit a certain size and have a large enough customer base, reputation helps. But companies that act in their own short-term interests without regard to integrity are likely to out-compete companies that try to behave ethically -- so all other things being equal, if a large company doesn't make a fuss about ethics and integrity, odds are it's evil. The ethical company has the long-term advantage, but the unethical company has the short-term advantage. If the unethical company can use the short-term advantage to its benefit, it can build up enough of a business that it's hard to topple despite being unethical. The second point is that the larger the company, the more its inherent trend towards self-serving (probably evil) behavior. Bureaucracies are inhuman, because the responsibility for the evil act or evil policy can always be passed on elsewhere or euphemized away, and a large number of problems turns into a statistic. One person screwed over by the company is a real problem; ten thousand screwed over by the company justifies the budget for the complaints department. It takes a very principled, very public stand to avoid both of these problems.
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