"The key difference between government and corporate power: governments are ultimately answerable to their citizens, whereas corporations are ultimately answerable to their shareholders. That means among other things that corporations can and will ruin the lives of their employees or residents of the surrounding area (via pollution mostly) if it increases their profits, can and will bilk their customers if they can get away with it, and don't really mind a large population of unemployed, broke, desperate people."
Sure, corporations need to increase profits, but that gives customers power. If a corporation is doing something you don't agree with, you can go to another one. This is the great thing about the free market.
It seems people are against monopolies, but have no problems when the government, a large monopoly that can play by different rules and has virtually no regulation does the exact same thing.
When a government controls something, they have the ultimate power because if you don't do what they say, you are subject to fines or possibly jail time. No corporation has this power. In addition to this, governments have no incentive to innovate. They are going to get your tax dollars either way.
They don't mind unemployed, broke, and desperate people? Now I know you are nuts. Corporations aren't drug dealers. They want people with money to be able to buy their products.
Some corporations "bilk their customers". However, if this happens enough, they get a bad reputation and people stop buying from them.
Government regulation caused our mortgage meltdown., not the lack of. Take a look at the community reinvestment act, the predictions made in 1995, and what happened to our economy.