Again, good points. We seem to be talking about the same thing, just from different angles: I view management as ignoring public opinion because the incentive that drives its motive is coming from an unintended source, primarily corporations and related organizations (especially financial firms) with enough influence to affect the human fallibility in management positions (i.e. buying/lobbying politicians).
How many Occupy Wall Street protesters realize just how dependent the world's economies are on major financial institutions and the consequences that would result if they actually did fail?
Government has acted as a single point of failure: while regulation used to protect against predatory actions, the regulated and regulators are now effectively the same; the result is that regulation harms those it used to protect and protects those it was meant to guide.
All of these statements are reasonable, but you're right that we're passing each other on the important bits; a premise is left unsaid: money is the problem with government. It's big business with it's ability to buy government that assists the removal of public opinion as a pressure point for politicians.
We're talking about sources of power. If that source is financial, it is very very easily transformed into violence and manipulation. A simple case in point: can you imagine the U.S. government using military police with assault rifles to intimidate, harass, and loot the public without serious backlash, and the media not have a shitstorm? No. How about when a private corporation does this?
Oh wait. Guess who's still the biggest private military contractor in the U.S.? Guess why? Because they spent millions on public relations to hide their dirty side. When you're faced with dwindling profits, the first response is not "How do I improve my product?" It's "How do I improve my image?" If the answer is lie, cheat and steal, that is what is done. If your life is in the public eye, like politicians, you get less leeway.
There are a lot of holes in my argument. But this takes the cake: Why do you think that the first time you heard about Herman Cain's
repeated sexual harassment problems was when he's running for president? Because public opinion
matters when you represent people.
Don't get me wrong. Business does many, many things better than government. Allocation of scarce normal goods, merit-based advancement, responsiveness to customers, and competition are often valuable results from free-market operations when they aren't tainted by market power. But business is
not in the business of preventing poverty, supporting healthcare that's good for the population, embracing competition, and protecting human rights. These cost money to enforce.
Wouldn't you rather have that money under the scrutiny of people that can make changes just by opening their mouths, instead of mobilizing full-on consumer-changing behavior? I would.