The US government has three branches to ensure that neither has absolute power, and it's an equally good idea to have the government as a third party that functions as a kind of marriage counsellor between consumers and producers. Three was always a good number.
Here in the EU we have a history of allowing the government to assume a stronger role in these matters, to keep corporations in check. Having the government serve as a mediator works wonders for the marriage. The result is that there's a rather good vibe between corporations and consumers. You'd think that in a more leftist part of the world there'd be a lot of anti-capitalism sentiments and hatred towards corporations, but actually it's nothing like that. Ironically that seems to be somewhat of an American thing. Few netizens spew more contempt towards corporations and corporate greed than Americans do, I've met actual bona fide communists who are more restrained in their criticism... I mean, is there any American iPhone owner who doesn't want to wipe AT&T from the face of the earth? Me, I love my iPhone carrier, I've kept my telecom business with Telia for 20 years, they always gave me excellent service for peanut money. I used to pay about $25/month for my iPhone 3G and recently changed to another plan where I'm paying about $15. I was thinking about getting the $50/month flat rate plan with unlimited talk time/data/MMS/SMS but I'm not really a heavy user.
And then there's this peculiar culture of lawsuits you have where everyone's itching to sue everyone. Customers suing corporations, corporations suing eachother... we don't have much of that over here, in part due to the fact that corporations are well behaved -- they know there'll be hell to pay if they don't play by the rules, and a government is a powerful adversary. Some lonely customer with a lawsuit isn't.
In my line of work I was at one point handling the sales@ inbox at an EU software company that sold products all over the world through their web shop, and there were some patterns that emerged after a few thousand mails. People from Europe, Japan, Canada and a few other places were generally respectful, trusting, easy going and took honest answers for what they were, while many Americans were rude, aggressive, suspicious and paranoid about getting screwed, looking for a hidden catch, like some kind of abuse victims who had been hurt one time too many to trust anyone again. I was sort of taken aback because I thought "hold on... aren't Americans supposed to love doing business and dealing with sales people, seeing as they're staunch supporters of free markets and privatization of everything from health care to schooling? I'd expect this kind of attitude from Castro, but not these guys..."
It appears to me that allowing corporations to roam free with very little regulation creates a nasty corporate culture and climate that isn't really beneficial to anyone. From a long experience I can tell you that having a government that takes a strong role removes a lot of that friction. A government that knows when to step in and when to stay out of the way. I do NOT want a government that bleeps out curse words or blurs nipples on TV, or demands a 7-second delay on live broadcasts, and luckily I don't. You guys do, and I'm not sure why a country that thrives on freedom puts up with North Korea-style BS like that, but... whatever.
Good material you have there. May take me a while to write up a list that large but their most certainly are plenty.
