But I have to wonder whose side you're on when your solution consists simply of surrender and handing over the keys of government to the people doing the corrupting.

Interesting, your automatic assumption that it's the businesses driving the corruption.

What in the world makes you think that what big business wants is simply the absence of regulation? What's even better is to get the government on your side to rig the playing field to disadvantage the competition. Has a business ever objected to tarrifs that keep out the competition? Don't phone and cable and utility companies prefer the security of government-granted monopolies to open competition? If a business would be crazy to turn down one of those lucrative tax-break deals meant to entice business into a town, why would it be crazy to take the initiative and exert influence on the government to be granted a place at the trough? You expect business to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

Who set it up so that the state controls imports and exports? The right to start a business in a certain place? Government monopolies? The power to punish and reward with taxes?

Maybe the people in Washington who live on power like a plant lives on sunlight had a little something to do with it?

Don't you get it? Take that power down a few notches and the established government/industry cliques lose power, and those who are being kept down by it will gain.

Do you honestly think that making companies smaller, while leaving unchanged the government's control over how business is done, is going to fix one damn thing? What happened when someone made a rule (I think sometime in the 1970s) that you couldn't contribute more than a few thousand dollars to a political candidate. This was done by starry-eyed idealists for the exact same reasons you give for reducing the size of corporations. So tell me, what really changed?

You can't deal with the idea of a less-powerful government because that power is very attractive for liberals and leftists who want to control things "for the good of the country."

I work in the private space industry, and most of the companies are well aware that the greatest danger is the government coming in and regulating them out of existence. That large aerospace corporations might be happy with that doesn't change the original problem. That's a symptom, not the heart of the issue.