Even if the power of individual vote seems very small, It can be used to instigate change. One can argue that in order to increase the power of people, one has to reduce the power of corporation lobbying etc.
Corporations are vast entities of unaccountable power when they are unregulated by a government.
Just recent elections show "the power of the individual vote" used to support things like Brexit in UK, Orban in Hungary, Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Maduro in Venezuela or, why not, Trump.
While the evil corporations give us, what, surveillance?!
We've never lived under corporations, but we’d always fear them. I for one, fear more the evil I know and I see ruining our world: politicians and their instruments of power, governments.
> While the evil corporations give us, what, surveillance?!
They've given us genocide, environmental destruction, the company town, the risk of being killed for striking, financial collapse, the funding of drug lords and terrorism[1].
All those given to us also by governments but a thousand times worse, along with wars, dictators, mass genocides, race purges, and so on and so forth.
I look around me and every single object I use and makes my life better was made by a corporation. From my PC to my phone to my house and my card.
While every single thing that makes me fear tomorrow and sucks in my life is controlled by governments: health care, roads, bureaucrats, borders, international conflicts, corruption, etc.
I don't fear Facebook knowing everything about me and selling that info to third parties, but I do fear my government buying that info from FB and using it restrict my freedoms in the name of my own good or simply to steal more money from me.
> I look around me and every single object I use and makes my life better was made by a corporation.
Markets work well for most commodities.
On the other hand, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid ensure that people don't die so they can hopefully go on to enjoy a better life.
> I don't fear Facebook knowing everything about me and selling that info to third parties
A KGB, but for advertising, still collects and centralizes private info that can be abused by any party, governmental or private. A recent example of that exact dataset being abused by a private entity: the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Also, insurers and repo-men love accurate location tracking etc. Your insurers most likely aren't using that information to give you better rates.
Corporations have ruined most of asian nations. East India Company British exploited India, looting it from a country having top wealth in world to the bottom, Dutch East India Company destroyed indigenous asian trade.
Fruit companies and other monopolies of USA have routinely looted and exploited people and wealth of Latin American.
I can go on, recent history is rife with corporations exploiting nations for natural resource and wealth.
Corporations are vast entities of unaccountable power when they are unregulated by a government.
Chomsky's criticism of corporations holds good, and is becoming prophetic in all accounts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYxGkFxb7f4