The difference is that they have to do this or cease to be. Right, I understand the principal. Though I'd argue that it's not that black and white - the market

The difference is that they have to do this or cease to be. Right, I understand the principal. Though I'd argue that it's not that black and white - the market is not a natural force like the waves in an ocean. Companies seek initial investment for growth, which can boil down to how strong your PowerPoint or people skills are, not on the strength of your ability to produce a decent product or service. The strength of your shares are often tied to public perception and professional market manipulation. The public's perception of the product itself often has little to do with reality but how well you've manipulated them into believing you add value to a (sometimes non-existent) void. And when you buy a product you can't see the organizational bickering between product/service divisions and executives - you don't see the sometimes horrendous failure rate because QA has hopefully pulled them off the line before they reach stores. Businesses don't need to open the kimono for all to see how, despite being somewhat dysfunctional and disorganized, they can still churn out a product. Businesses are made up of people, like governments, and so there are many parallels. whereas the power a consumer has with his dollar is generally a lot stronger In principal, yes. Though when we examine consumer choice let's look at, say, the mobile industry - despite starting with many different platforms and manufacturers, the market has naturally gravitated towards two primary platform choices and two primary hardware manufacturers. Humans are quite good at condensing complex options into binary choices.