>But in no country does a corporation respond to the people at large
"respond to the people at large" is an awfully general characterisation.
What corporations typically do is respond to wishes of their customers and prospective customers, provided they can make money from doing so. If one corporation does not, a competitor probably will. So there are potential alliances to be formed between consumers and specific corporations regarding specific political issues.
Again, I'm not saying that the market or consumer power magically replaces democracy or that the interests of consumers and corporations are naturally aligned in general.
> the interests of consumers and corporations are naturally aligned in general
Maybe in the perfect magical world of highschool civics where consumers have total freedom to choose from amongst competitive products and corporations are perfectly open about privacy. The reality is much less idealized. Corporations lie to customers daily. Contracts bind customers to not adopt competitive products. And state-sanctioned monopolies in many counties (US/Canada/China) severely limit choice.
Any publicly traded corporation, by definition, is only interested in money. Sometimes appeasing customers helps that bottom line, but often it doesn't. Sometimes screwing over you customers is the way, especially when those customers have nowhere else to go.
My sentence that you are quoting starts with "I'm not saying that ...". It doesn't make sense to drop the negation from a sentence and then refute what's left.
"respond to the people at large" is an awfully general characterisation.
What corporations typically do is respond to wishes of their customers and prospective customers, provided they can make money from doing so. If one corporation does not, a competitor probably will. So there are potential alliances to be formed between consumers and specific corporations regarding specific political issues.
Again, I'm not saying that the market or consumer power magically replaces democracy or that the interests of consumers and corporations are naturally aligned in general.