With all their problems, big bureaucracies in the private sector are more flexible and current than public bureaucracies. No doubt, part of the reason is that they are ultimately subject to the cold calculation of profit and loss. If your world is largely about what people buy and sell, my world is also about what people feel and fear. To take a potent recent example, rural Canadians were not much persuaded by arguments that bank mergers would make Canada more competitive, if the immediate consequence was to shut down their local branch. Voters may embrace the logic of freer trade.
Statistics show that growing numbers do.
But, as ordinary Canadians watch multiple acquisitions and corporate concentrations, they feel that power over their lives is slipping out of their reach. They worry when 22,000 farmers go off the land in one year in Prairie Canada. They don't like their water being poisoned. They don't like the wage gap between a CEO and an Administrative Assistant in most of the large companies who carry Canada's colors in international trade. Business ignores them at your peril.