Sure, but the fundamental premise is that good corporations are seeking to generate profits, and good governments are seeking to provide for their constituents.
A corporation that doesn't prioritize profits isn't a good corporation. You wouldn't buy stock in it. A government that isn't prioritizing its constituents is a bad one, you wouldn't vote for it.
Everything else is implementation detail but it's obvious that governments need to check corporate power because otherwise the inevitable end game is a corpotocracy ruling over factory towns of debt slaves.
Corporations exist to do whatever their directors or shareholders want them to do. For publicly-traded corporations that's typically to generate profits, but not all corporations are listed on a stock exchange and even the public ones could in principle have their shareholders vote to do something else. If a corporation wants to build electric cars to fight climate change or build housing to reduce housing scarcity, that doesn't make it "bad" -- it's good, and you don't want the government impeding that when somebody wants to do it. Or even when they want to do the same thing to make money, because it can be both things at once.
And just because a government that doesn't prioritize its constituents is bad doesn't mean that the government we have is good, or that every existing regulation is benefiting constituents rather than harming them.
> If a corporation wants to build electric cars to fight climate change or build housing to reduce housing scarcity, that doesn't make it "bad" -- it's good, and you don't want the government impeding that when somebody wants to do it.
It's good so long as it's profitable and grows. The market determines good and bad, nothing else. Companies must grow indefinitely or their stock price drops, any earnings announcement makes this obvious, even positive growth earnings might cause a stock price drop if the earnings growth wasn't large enough. Flat earnings, with a margin increase? Stock price devaluation, see Microsoft / Xbox. The word is right there, value. The value of a company is determined by its market price (or theoretical market price if it's still private), and nothing else. The market value of its shares are the final word.
Sure, companies might occasionally do good things, but that core definition of value under capitalism doesn't change.
You're still stuck on publicly-traded corporations.
Try one of these. A non-profit gets a million dollars in donations to build new housing with the model of selling it into the market and using the proceeds to build even more. They still have to comply with all the laws, so you don't want the laws to adversarially impede its humanitarian mission to improve housing affordability and reduce homelessness, right?
> They still have to comply with all the laws, so you don't want the laws to adversarially impede its humanitarian mission to improve housing affordability and reduce homelessness, right?
I do want the laws to ensure that the buildings have fire escapes and no asbestos...
Non profits can, apparently, convert to for-profit ones, or be bought, or be corrupt funnels of government contract money to for-profit corporations.
These are arguments for improving and simplifying regulations, but not arguments against the idea that there should be an entity the represents nothing other than the needs of the constituents (the government) that will enforce rules on entities that wish to extract value from constituents (corporations). Non profit corps are attempts to exist within that system while playing by the rules but it doesn't change the fact that we still need the rules to control the hyperfauna wandering around.
> I do want the laws to ensure that the buildings have fire escapes and no asbestos...
The classic retreat into the subset of the rules that make sense.
But do you also want to ensure that they're no more than two stories tall and supply housing for no more than one family per lot?
> Non profits can, apparently, convert to for-profit ones, or be bought, or be corrupt funnels of government contract money to for-profit corporations.
Which one of these is the concern justifying that a house of a particular size not have a finished basement?
> These are arguments for improving and simplifying regulations, but not arguments against the idea that there should be an entity the represents nothing other than the needs of the constituents (the government) that will enforce rules on entities that wish to extract value from constituents (corporations).
You're back to that assumption that the government represents nothing other than the needs of the constituents. That one's the broken one.
The government has a monopoly on force and anyone who seeks power will work to capture it. It's not a loyal pet and its teeth have blood on them.
> The classic retreat into the subset of the rules that make sense.
Yes, because lasseiz-faire has no allowance for the subset of rules that make sense, so I oppose that mindset, but I don't oppose one that promotes simplified, context aware regulations, such as what the PRC has.
> The government has a monopoly on force and anyone who seeks power will work to capture it. It's not a loyal pet and its teeth have blood on them.
Right, my argument applies only if there's an existent state, and is basically to make the most of it by at least checking the power of corporations, which are more motivated to harm people than governments. If you say there can be bad governments, sure yes, but that's just as much an indictment of lasseiz-faire economics since there can be bad corporations too, and in fact that's far more likely.
Ideally there's no state at all, but the only way to have that without corpotocracy is to also dismantle capitalism and private property, and something tells me you wouldn't be a fan of that either...
In the situation that the personnel and legal code of the government depend very little on the outcome of elections in practice, would you say that the incentives for a government would be rather different?
A corporation that doesn't prioritize profits isn't a good corporation. You wouldn't buy stock in it. A government that isn't prioritizing its constituents is a bad one, you wouldn't vote for it.
Everything else is implementation detail but it's obvious that governments need to check corporate power because otherwise the inevitable end game is a corpotocracy ruling over factory towns of debt slaves.