Recently I've been accused of being a corporate apologist because I made a qualified positive remark about Apple - not the first time I've heard the accusation, and I suspect won't it be the last. Now, I'm not fool enough to believe that corporations are all sweetness and light; quite the opposite, I've had ample experience directly dealing with corporations (large recording and media companies mainly, better known as the dregs of the scum), I've worked for corporations, I've bought from corporations, I've been screwed at both ends of the supply chain and in the middle, so I've learned first-hand what utter bastards they can be all round. They're money making machines without concern for any other issue, pure and simple.
That's the vitriol out of the way, now for the pragmatism.
Corporations, for all their lack of ethics and outright illegal activites, do represent the largest source of investment in R&D and manufacturing infrastructure, whether we like it or not. The government isn't going to take over any time soon; if anything, government investment in R&D is going to drop as welfare spending increases (and its debatable whether government R&D is the most efficient method of funding, but that's a side issue). To use a subject close to all our hearts, without corporations the size of Intel, AMD or IBM, who would step up to continue development of microprocessors? I'm not trolling, its a serious question. Building a new chip fab isn't really compatible with the open source philosophy because it needs a substantial investment in physical equipment; though I'm sure the talent is available to design a very high quality processor through a distributed effort, getting it into production would be another matter. That's just one example, and our mass-production based consumerist society is full of others.
So the question I'm enabling comments for is this: what would you, gentle slashdotter, suggest as a way of making the existing corporate system more accountable and ethical, or alternatively, what system could be used to compete against the corporation from a grass-roots level, in an open source-like manner? How can the energy from all the anger I see be channelled into useful action? I'm interested to hear what people think can be done; of course, I'll patent any really good ideas ;)