While it is true that a corporation can only sell what people want to buy, a lot of large corporate entities have spend a lot of time and money researching how to influence what people want to buy. To a really ridiculous degree. Furthermore, a lot of large corporate entities have no problem doing things that the vast majority of people would consider immoral (at the very least) to reduce their costs, or increase the likelihood of someone purchasing more of their product(s).

People who hate corporations for being corporations generally aren't really thinking about what they don't like about said corps, and also rarely take the time to consider how the corporations actions would be justifiable (in a human sense, not necessarily just in the profit-motive sense) to the people running them.

I think that what people tend to rail against is corporations like Monsanto. Sure, they can only sell what 'people' want to buy - but they also have no problem with showing utter disregard for human life or the environment, furthermore what they sell is not marketed at individuals - they end up being only able to sell what other corporations want to buy (who in turn don't know or don't care about said disregard for human life or the environment), and have enough money to buy their way out of most legal trouble.

Makes sense to me. I also have a theory that with the world becoming more and more related with media being more and more similar across countries, your neighbors are suddenly all the celebrities and people on TV.

And we know that you value your worth relatively to what your neighbors have. So with your neighbors suddenly being much better off due to them being celebrities, you end up feeling poorer and must play the consumerism game.

I'll try to rewrite this to make more sense later - pretty tired now.