Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I really do not think major corporations are hindering progress somehow.  That assertion makes no sense to me.  What happens is they come and go, others replace them over time.  Remember KMart?  Woolworths?  Even GE got chisseled.

Well K-Mart isn't going to have lobbyists restricting new laws to prolong their business, but many do.  You're citing stores against a point where I was using major industries as examples.
The corporations can't halt progress forever, but the bigger they are and the more proactive they are in maintaining the situation in which they became ultra-successful, the longer they're able to stagnate things.
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Look at the auto industry.  There's a reason we all know who Elon Musk is.  He's promoting a paradigm shift.  Because aside from safety and entertainment developments, cars haven't changed a lot in 50 years.  Why is that?  Why did the largest automakers need unholy bailouts?  They were fat, bloated whales and existed as such because there was no reason to be anything else.  They had no incentive to change.  
They only made their cars more eco-friendly when the customer started caring about that in their buying decisions (and the pollution laws that followed).  Of course they fought it along the way, often in private.  
I'm not saying anything radical here.  When you've mastered checkers, you aren't incentivized to go start playing chess.  Usain Bolt isn't going to start running the mile now.  It makes sense to want to keep things how they are when you're a titan in that environment.  
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Without Elon Musk, Ford, Chevy, and the like would still be poo-pooing electric cars.  Their growing market share would be stagnant.  Our choices would be more limited.  Without individuals who want something better, progress doesn't happen.  
Reliance on oil - same.
Old, slow train lines - same.
Soft drinks - same.
Tyson chicken - same.
Dozens of companies I've probably never even heard of - same.  Basically any industry that gets up-in-arms about a successful upstart is who I'm talking about here.  They're not specifically colluding, but they're not doing their best to break off from the pack.  These big companies want to be first, in a tightly-packed group of herd-mentality companies, where no one rocks the boat.  It's like the mile run at a track meet in the first 2 laps.

It's just my opinion, but I think OAM has an ultra simplistic view of Big Business, Europe, and a few other things.

It's  like getting information from some movie, it's just weird.  To me.

It's just my opinion, but I think OAM has an ultra simplistic view of Big Business, Europe, and a few other things.

It's  like getting information from some movie, it's just weird.  To me.

pretty simple to me

private sector bad only out for their own benefit

public sector good have the well being for all citizens at heart

It's just my opinion, but I think OAM has an ultra simplistic view of Big Business, Europe, and a few other things.

It's  like getting information from some movie, it's just weird.  To me.

I think you've had a veil over your eyes for 12 decades and so lifting that veil may be difficult.

Well, I have worked for a large company, I have a first hand sense of how they work.  I've traveled extensively in Europe and have a French wife, so I have some firsthand knowledge of that as well.  A LOT of what you post is, to me, naive crap, garnered from Hollywood movies.

My French cousins who have never traveled to the US  have a similar kind of view of how life is here, and it's based on movies, and strange French reportage.

Companies evolve, or die, with changing times.  

Of course they are like us in most respects.  A LOT of Americans admire Europe, from afar, having spent maybe a week there as a tourist.

I had coworkers at my level in the company living in Europe.  Their standard of living was maybe half mine.  Same compensation basically.  They were scraping by and envious of us in the US.

IMHO, a lot of the public vs private Innovation debate here is misguided. The bigger issue, a lot of times, is simply size and burecratic inertia.

Large bureaucracies are generally terrible at Innovation irrespective of whether they are public or private.

Innovation generally comes from small start-up types. Once the Innovation gets off the ground and proves successful, frequently the start-up that launched it will be acquired by a much larger, established company.

Generally, but the response of many large companies to this pandemic has been stellar.