>problem only when the consequence is brought on you by the government

It's not that corporations (or individuals) are seen as being naturally good. But they don't have the power to imprison you or silence you by force and, in fact, would be committing a crime by doing so. They have some civil remedies for stealing trade secrets or breaching NDAs.

Certainly major corporations have a lot of power. But it is still a fundamentally different degree and type of power than the government has.

> But they don't have the power to imprison you or silence you by force

The ability to fire you and give scathing negative references to any prospective future employers (thus in turn eradicating one's ability to participate in a market-driven economy/society) is just as severe of a penalty, and imposing that penalty for the purposes of silencing political dissent is just as reprehensible. We're (hopefully) critical of that having happened in retrospect during the era of McCarthyism and Red Scares; why should we be expected to accept that as "okay" now?

And that's all even without the ability to lobby politicians to make laws in their benefit / at your expense.

This is a major point that people fail to appreciate. Prior to the mass urbanization and industrialization of America, corporations were basically irrelevant in terms of what they could do to you. People were, at any rate, much more self-sufficient.

Even if you did infuriate your neighbors to the point where the guy at the general store wouldn't deal with you - you could pick up and move somewhere else, not even that far away, and it would all be fine.

That's absolutely not the case today. If you get hit by the wrong company, you can be denied the right to participate in swaths of society. And no matter where you go, they're there. You can't get away. Their power extends throughout the country, and often outside of it too.

And as society changed in this manner, we've done nothing to ensure our freedoms remain protected. We've mostly thrown up our hands and decided by default that it was okay because at least the government wasn't doing it - even though corporations hold just as much power to make your life absolutely miserable. It seems a little silly to point out they can't arrest you - oh, sure, not directly, but they can do a whole lot to you short of that, and they can go a long way towards getting you arrested.

Well then I guess you would have to start your own business or live off the land. The government can't prevent you from doing either of those activities and you're on a site full of people who do these sorts of things, so it's not impossible, just really, really, hard.

Being fired is not as severe as imprisonment.

It's not that it's only a problem when the consequence is brought by the government, but that US policy is so actively hostile to worker interests that the vast majority of employees can be fired at any time for any reason other than when that reason is somewhere explicitly stated to be because the worker is a member of a short list of protected classes.

There's no "right to publicly support things that are not illegal without employer punishment."

> For some reason, a lot of people consider it a problem only when the consequence is brought on you by the government.

Well this is because it's all the the US constitution legally protects us from.

I agree with your general point about corporate power, but getting fired from your job (corporate power) is simply not the same as getting thrown in jail or having your rights reduced in any way (state power)