If for example, environmental laws were to be taken away globally and there was no punishment for corporate pollution, regardless of what we know about it now, companies would very quickly make changes to their production to cut out the unnecessary costs of environmental consideration. If child slave labor was legal, they would be using it for as long as it made financial sense to do so. The only thing that stops companies acting worse than they do is, legal and customer consequence, and both don't seem to be very effective as the legal ramifications are generally less costly than the profits made and the consumer base only cares about getting what they want cheap and conveniently.
I'd say that this is not thaaat simple. Sometimes it's those corporations' best interest to keep such regulations high. Why? Because they are huge and can afford to more or less stick to these regulations, while still earning a shit tonne of money.
Very strict regulations make it harder for a competing company to rise up and effectively destroys the free market. A huge international corporate company employs thousands of lawyers which will get them through anything.
Poland, where I come from, is the best example, where there's a lot of bureaucracy everywhere. If you want to run a company, you are kicked in the ass time after time. Even though we don't have the highest taxes in the EU, we have the most complicated tax policy in the entire EU. Even professionals accountants have a hard time to keep up with all the changes, where you can have a major overhaul to the law every few months. Huge corporations have no problem with that, they have their lawyers. And even if they mess something up, they just pay some laughable low fine and they're good.
On the other hand, if you're a small business owner in Poland, you stress out every day. Should you lose some stupid paper or they make an incognito inspection, where you sell them a stupid lighter without giving the receipt and they will fine the hell out of you (that's a real story, BTW).
This is all very clear. Poland is colonized by many external powers, to the point where it's not rare for people here to compare its situation to Bantustan countries in South Africa.
While bit by bit we are being chipped away at, it is happening globally on a mass scale and we can see this in the increasing speed that the wealth gap is growing. But because we only consider us as an individual in the economy, we are much like the proverbial frog in a pot, and the water is getting warmer.
Eh, fighting for increasing people's awareness is the hardest fight. Especially that powerful parties fight all the time to decrease it.
Haven't been commenting for some time now! Thanks for the post, that was a good read. And great to see you feeling good and posting a lot again after your health issues. Stay healthy and keep up the great work!