They're also vicious, many times I have been cussed out by bureaucrats over stupid things like css padding on a table. There are lines that don't get crossed in corporate politics, none of those lines exist in government.
The majority of things illegal in governments are business as usual in the private sector. Want to take a kickback of a supplier? Perfectly fine and normal on non large corporations. Still happens on those.
Because you had luck with your career is not representative of overall corporate behaviour. I worked as a third party seeing lots of large companies as clients. The amount of BS is outstanding and awe inspiring.
Everybody cries when the government raises taxes. Yet, when corporations increase prices despite not having higher cost, we just accept it as "business as usual".
As corporations rival the power of nations more and more, some people should rethink their attitude to public and private enterprise.
See: British East India Company. I don't really have a relevant point to make here but corporations being more powerful than countries actually seems to be the default state that has already been dealt with somewhat, rather than a novel growing problem.
What's different in our time, is that it is not just one company, but a whole range of mega-companies (Particularly in technology). It has changed from a few powerful and malicious actors to a systematic problem, fueled by the dynamics of the financial markets and passive investment.
Reading your comment I saw so many similarities to any large organisation which I worked for that I can't help but think it's simply on the same level.
Hell, my first internship was 100% budget filler and, in line with my role, I was useless.
Regarding inefficiency: I'm a contractor for a large organisation and have been for over three years now.
My contract is up in a few months and by that time I will have a total of four years of cancelled projects under my belt. At least one of them started out as an Excel sheet and in truth could have remained so.