This I would take you to task on. If the corporatist is providing a service no one else is then, no, the public cannot simply decide to stop buying from them at any time. There are certain things in life required nowdays to get by. You can't just buy your electricity from whomever you choose to. In some cases, you can't just buy your groceries from whomever you choose to as the choices have been obliterated by competition from the corporatitsts. Poor people will shop at Walmart even if they detest Walmart because it is all they might be able to afford. This flies utterly in the face of your own statements.
There were early warnings about what the end would be of allowing the existance of corporations and mega-companies. Now that their existance is reality, so too are the warnings - the divedends being paid are exactly as predicted or worse. Greed is an addiction. Any addiction left untreated feeds upon itself and becomes worse to a point of abusiveness that is predictable. When that abusiveness is aimed at all of society, the end result is a sort of tyranicism mot unlike the marxists, socialists and fascists who function by undermining, demeaning and denying the worth of average people. The institution is the thing of worth, not the individual. The individual is expendable. That is the situation we have under corporatist reign. And the attitude is on display here daily.
As for the argument that SF writers have been by and large leftist, on that I would generally agree. There are exceptions; but, given the mentality of a corporatist system ruling the roost on who gets published, this is no more a surprise than Ann Coulter being a best selling author despite the fact that she had to go to lesser publishers to stand a chance of getting published. This is not to say that leftist and Conservative presses function differently. If the goal is power and/or money, the outcome will be predictable as to the goal. Leftists valued power over money and would risk printing books that would not sell rather than risk printing books that would sell but that might undermine their power if people started thinking.
When it comes to political debate in this country, the same mindset is evident. The way to keep political power is to keep the people from setting the agenda. Power comes from controlling the message. So if you keep the messages out that you don't want heard or dealt with, just as in publishing, people might loose or be kept in the dark; but, the people in power stay in power.
We don't have to accept the politicians marched out in front of us that we are told we can vote for. Nor do we have to necessarily put up with the further existance of corporatism. Neither of those messages is particularly pleasing to the crowd in DC or here. But it's a message coming from America. Average people are sick of being seen as expendable. If they can't afford an education - which many cannot, then they are treated as refuse. They are human beings and they are not expendable. They have worth that is not dependant upon money or education. And they deserve to live and make a living just like anyone else. Hacking their opportunities away and sending them abroad in order to enrich the few at the top even more is disgusting in the extreme. Average people don't need less opportunity, they need more. The wealth game today has turned into a power struggle even more than it ever was. When single individuals have so much money and control so much in America that they could stop now and no family member would ever have to work a day in their life for generations upon generations, the money is no longer the goal - power is. Oil companies bring in profits in the Billions each quarter. That's Billions with a "B". Yet they still find the need to raise prices? Billions. Common sense tells us that's "screw everyone" money. But, it's "screw everyone" power that is in play - not the money.
The bottom line here is that corporate power begets corporate power and the end of it is a society that is as throw away to the Corporatists as the paper plates and plastic forks our microwave meals are served on. Money and power are the only things that seem to matter. And the lust for both is dehumanizing all of us.
I put the word "required" in those little thinggies because in some countries where 'rampant corporatism' wasn't allowed to take hold, they do not have the benefit of these 'required' things...yet they still live - and they don't live like a bunch of candy-asses who look for 'unfairness' and 'injustice' throughout society because some business owners have what they do not. You and your like-minded thinkers on this topic have a lot of nerve talking about how the corporatist 'keep you down' or that there is some kind of 'faceless capitalism' going on. You may not of used those particular phrases but it's just the same old crap only it's different flies.
And what of those people in non-industrialized countries? Do you have any soft spot for them? Do you care that by pining for socioeconomic justice in the domestic society [a society with an unemployment rate below 5%, Real GDP over 3%, home ownership hovering at 70%] that you not only hurt those who live in real misery but you also make those quoted domestic statistics worse? See that's the part you probably disagree with. You probably believe that trade and commerce lead to socioeconomic decline yet you'd be hard pressed to come up with the proper prescription for what ails the non-indstrialized countries and you would not be able to answer the empirical evidence that shows that America is better off when it trades/ engages in commerce more and worse off when she does not.
Enough! This rant is getting incoherent and I'm not staying on topic...it's because I'm sickened that I have to defend capitalism so vehemently on a conservative Internet forum. It's your turn to respond.