As I've said before, I think part of their behavior is that it's seen as a sign of success. Usually when people talk about things like this they refer back to the classic movie "Wall Street" and it's "Greed is Good" speech. The bottom line being that a company that has to be seen as the good guys and listen to their customers and play fair is seen as being "weak". One that can basically say "profit before everything" and insult their customer base and any little guy who works with them and still remain in business because the customers want their product so badly, and the little guys are running to them lemming-like in hopes that things will be differant... well that's a sign of a "strong" company. If your a serious investor and you have a choice between dealing with "Nice Guys Incorperated" which is careful to toe the line, and say "Activision" which pretty much takes a dump on everyone and everything while Bobby Kotick laughs about it and STILL makes money hand over fist, your probably going to go deal with Kotick assuming your in a position to deal with him on equal terms.
This generally blows chips, but that's just how the world is for the moment.
Also one admittedly insane point by today's standards:
I will be honest in saying that I believe there is a lot of truth behind the old maxim that "an armed society is a polite society". I think that the right to keep and bear arms was intended for a large number of reasons, not just for a militia, but to keep the goverment in line, and also simply because people respect a man with a gun, and if everyone has a gun and knows how to use it, people are going to tread far more carefully to be fair in their dealings. I mean even if your a really fast gunslinger, there is always that chance the guy your talking to is faster, or that your going to have a bad day.
The idea being that it's still illegal to murder someone, and the court system has it's place, but honestly people are going to be far more reluctant to serve their "I just screwed you and ruined your life, while stealing all your stuff" paperwork if there is a serious risk that they won't be leaving the room alive afterwards.
Yes, I know how crazy this is, but some authors like "Robert Heinlan" (one of my favorites, especially in the early days) made some pretty interesting points about things like this, and in a lot of cases when I read stuff like this article it makes me wonder what he'd have said about it (though also consider when he got older some of his positions changed a little, his book "Friday" detailed the society he built up in "Gulf" collapsing).
