The phone industry

Recently I made a decision to make the great leap from a land line to a mobile phone and I was reminded of the scumminess of business. If it is for the advancement--that is an increase in net income--anything goes. Business never needs to moralize, just economize.
I had a mobile phone because the telephone line in my building died and the owner wouldn't repair it so for a short time I bought and used the phone from Bell for about $35. but went back to a land line as soon as I could (long story). That was about two years ago so I figured on using it again. But--first I heard about locked phones when I went to Telus (because they had the cheapest rate I could find). So I went to Bell who tell me they will no longer service this particular phone. They will sell me another for $100 plus a  minimum monthly charge of $35. Back to Telus who sold me the same phone Bell refused to service for $60. They find ways to add another entry in the balance sheet and principle is not part of the decision in the boardroom. Another way to make money, purely for the sake of money, to gouge the public and force them to buy and buy and buy, and it's still not enough.
But that's what business has become since WWII when Canada started pretty well from scratch to develop industry. People were quite decent then. No one knew anything, we all had to be trained and by someone else who was learning. But most people weren't overtly avaricious, they would have been embarrassed to show greed. The few who did were thought to be from the underworld and best kept at a distance.
But in the early 70s Milton Friedman made an entrance in global economics with neoliberalism and gave businessmen the right to be unabashedly greedy. From the outset it was clear it was no place for women. We were used for jobs men wouldn't dream of doing and it was what kept companies together. Girlfriends, mothers, sisters, aunts were the machines used to start new businesses, the tedious, monotonous administration work that no one wants to do, and they never got paid although it was promised when the company was "up and running." It was assumed by entrepreneurs that their female contacts would become their free office managers. I was there. We weren't asked, we were told to answer the phone with the company name, keep the books, and be there when called. We didn't think we could refuse and we never did. We assumed, as men did, that we were on the planet to serve men and at their pleasure.
So things got dumped on us and as we worked for established business we were paid a subsistence income, just enough to get by. That's still true. And if you were to try to talk to a business owner about this, he would tell you you should be grateful that he has given women work. Where would we all be without the charity, the generosity, the patronization of business owners.
Business now is pretty cocky. Now they openly declare that whatever the problem with the client, we would take it, because no one would dare cause of the loss of a customer. Regardless of principles, or lack of them, or what everyone knows about him or the customer, we serve them, entirely for the sake of the owner's profit, none of which we will ever realize. 
We subsidized business then, and still do, and have never been compensated.