Well, you can, just on a quite different timescale, and with different capex requirements, usually. But fair point.

I think that's a good point, there is a general cultural stink to it, and there always has been, which is interesting to consider. (E.g., so many stories from the bible. Stories from classical history.)

Working hypothesis: some of this vibe comes from the fact that, psychologically, there are at least two kinds of value, as @k00b and I are discussing elsewhere in these comments, and these two values have some relationship to each other, but are not identical. And people really hate when one is mistaken for the other, but at scale, the only one that has ever worked is the market-transaction model. So people feel opposition to that, since their lives are dominated by it in a certain way.

Tyler Cowen has written an interesting book on the virtues of the corporation, to try to redeem it from villainy. Can't recall the name off the top of my head. Mises goes on and on about this too, though of course he would.