Please explain why making profit is a problem.
Promise me you will never run a business.
Quality and profit go hand in hand. People won't necessarily buy a piece of crap, even if it is cheaper than its competition. This goes for everything from cars to cell phones to houses. You can argue that profit is first and foremost, but profit will not come unless the consumer is satisfied.
A company's goal is to make a profit by selling something that people want. If people start being efficiency-conscious and begin trending toward more efficient TVs, you can bet that companies will pick up on that trend quickly, and begin selling efficient sets to satisfy the consumer's wants. And then make a profit.
Notice I said nothing about a government. It's called a free market. The basics are simple, but it can get complicated, most of it is common sense, and I'm not the most knowledgeable on how it all works at GTP. Others might be able to enlighten you better.
If I may, I will answer both your questions in one go, and with an example:
Now and then, cases appear when a group of companies making similar products have met a secret agreement to keep prices on the market high to make more profit. Since there are no cheaper alternatives as all the companies that make these products are part of the agreement, the consumer is bound to pay the artificially high price and thus increase the companies profits. Is this still free market?
I would be perfectly fine with the free market if it would work as intended: Make good products and you make profit, make bad products and you make losses. Problem is that there's only a handful of companies which goes considerable lengths to manufacture good quality products through and through. And then, there's the other side:
There is a manufacturer of loudspeakers (which name is not of importance) which has made a name in making ultra-cheap and quite good sounding loudspeaker systems. This manufacturer can only maintain this price level my having them made cheaply and with little quality control in China. Therefore, a substantial portion of said speaker systems is faulty right out of the box. To compensate, the company runs a quite generous repair department which will happily send you a completely new system to replace your faulty one right away. They are able to do so because the production costs virtually nothing.
So what they do is knowingly make an arguably bad product from the beginning and compensate with generous behavior to make up for it. The consumer welcomes their ultra-low prices with open arms and single-handedly raised them to the very top of the sales in their share of the market in no time.
Now imagine you're a manufacturer which invests time and money in making a good quality product. Of course, that also makes your product more expensive, so you just can't go the prices of your competitor. You'll be gone sooner than you can say "But our speakers are better!".
Now, even if it may appear different to some of you, I am not a communist. I am not saying that the goverment should regulate everything, let alone own everything. Yet, I personally think that there are a lot of things going very wrong in the excessively lived capitalism we have nowadays (see the global financial crisis as a result of letting a bunch of companies run freely). Therefore, I am fine with another power caring for the interests of their people, us, by governing the industry if necessary.
@ Keef: I think there are worse people than me who could run a business. Not that I would be particularly good at that, but with the job I have right now, I am trying to meet the expectations of all sides involved, which includes my own conscience. I know that I could probably be more successful if I would shove it aside and solely concentrate on making money. Yet, I couldn't sleep at night anymore. I suppose that's not how you would like a company to be run, is it?
