Out of Pod Experience

I would agree for the most part. Many of the mega corps could not have gotten so big with out government. They feed one one another. Huge regulations don't hurt big corporations in the long run, they instead reduce competition by increasing the cost of business. Less competition, more market share for the big guys, more profits to use to capture even more regulation and influence government.

If government were small, and lept small, then they big corps would face more competition, government could not be as abused, since it would have less power.

The trick to all of this is having decent courts that enforce contract law and enforce good stewardship of common property, such as air and water.

Regulations are effective at curbing the power of megacorporations if your government doesn't pander to them. E.g: The Glass-Steagall Act was wonderful. Its no coincidence that the demise of the Glass-Steagall act precipitated the financial crisis, after completely removing the distinction between banks of deposit and investment banks. That, and the banks inventing a new form of security, which they lobbied heavily to keep the government from regulating.
When it comes to economics, government regulations that affect things on a macroeconomic level tend to help, e.g. money supply, regulating investment and loan types, etc. Its when the government gets involved in things like subsidies of particular things that the market tends to suffer.

Less government allows monopolies and the like to gain control over entire sectors of the economy. Regulations didn't stop De Beers because there were no regulations on De Beers. Also, historically, the 40s and 60s were a pretty good time for the American economy and people, and there was a rather strong government with plenty of regulations in place.

As someone with a master's degree in economics, the way I see it is that it isn't an issue of government vs corporations, or even regulation vs. deregulation. Government is a good thing, and corporations are also a good thing. Regulation often is a good thing, but so is deregulation. The true enemies of a healthy economy are agency conflicts and unpredictability.

Neither governments nor corporations can last very long without the support of "the people," but both suffer from agency conflicts in that the incentives of individuals within the organization don't line up with those of the organization itself. Whether it's a lazy manager, an embezzling CEO, or a bought-and-paid-for congressman, it all stems from the same problem. The problem isn't how to control governments and corporations (they have a natural interest in controlling themselves); the problem is how to channel the inherent and irreparable self-interest of individuals within governments and corporations in the best way possible.

Likewise, regulation isn't a strictly good or strictly bad thing. Antitrust regulation is (I think) an obviously good thing, because it opposes a natural movement which is clearly against society's welfare. Price control regulation is (I think) an obviously bad thing because it biases the invisible hand movements of the economy away from it's natural distribution and causes needless over- and under-production of many things. And wage control regulation is (I think) somewhere in the middle with several valid arguments on both sides of the issue. My opinion, though, is that the only good regulation is a well-crafted and well-implemented one, an obviously impossible ideal for any representative legislature; so I tend to lean on the side of less regulation.

As for unpredictability, it is single most damaging factor in any recession. When the stock markets crash, the real problem isn't that people aren't investing enough but rather that people don't know what to invest in. The best thing a government (or a corporation, for that matter) can do in a recession is to provide certainty and stability. The worst thing a government can do is to get up in arms with a flurry of sweeping new laws which may or may not get passed, may or may not be implemented if passed, and may or may not have the intended consequences if implemented. The effects (if any) of such measures won't really be felt for a couple years at the earliest, while the uncertainties they generate continue to slow the economy right now.

Even if you found the "right rules", we still have to rely on people to enforce them and not change them and circumvent them. There are no perfect rules, there are no perfect people to follow, enforce and uphold the rules.