In the same sense that ecosystems as a rule do better with a relatively high degree of diversity, so too do both businesses and the economy as a whole. What we want are a wide array of small, medium, large, and giant corporations existing in very complex arrays subject to constant change. Just like in the wild.
Unchecked giant corporations are like weeds that reduce complexity, and weaken the overall health of the ecosystem/economy.
A nascent sense of this is in my view what underlies the Buy Local movement. But most of the hipsters with the Keep “…” Weird lack sufficient nuance to grasp that they do in fact like Capitalism, and business: they just don’t like big business, which is not at all the same as business. Every hip bar and bookstore is a Capitalist institution, which exists for profit–which is to say nothing less or more than that they want to recompensed for the work they do and the products they make available, which is the only real alternative to slavery.
The health of our political order depends in no small measure on the health of our economy, which is ENTIRELY dependent on business activity. There is no other source of income that is sustainable. All government employees are paid with money taken from corporations and people who work for corporations. This is true even if the money is borrowed or printed, although there is an added time delay that makes this less obvious.
There must always be a transfer of wealth from business people to the government for it to function, and this wealth is in motion. It can change countries, cease its profit making activities and it is always exhausted after a time if it stays put. A misunderstanding of this basic fact is what has doomed Greece and Venezuela, and many other nations.
There will never be a shortage of people promising free stuff. And if enough people listen, that democracy dies. It is really that simple. It dies for the same reason that overfarmed or overforaged ecosystems die: there is not enough food left to sustain life, and a collapse happens as a series of related microdisasters. Some plant dies which some animal depends on, so that animal dies out, and the animals that lived on it die out too. It is exactly the same in economies. Exactly.
Excessive taxation–which I would define as over 25% on anything–and overregulation are the forces which cause the mass extinctions we call depressions. Well, that and of course the business cycles that fractional reserve banking enables. That we might compare to a periodic flood or drought. But that takes me beyond the point I wanted to make.