> I'm not exactly sure why I should find a corporate entity any less centralized or unelected or not respectful of rights than a government
Because corporate entities and government entities operate under radically different frameworks.
The domain of government is force. This isn't a bad thing, it is necessary. Government is the recognition that we, as human beings, can interact with each other in two fundamental ways: force or reason/diplomacy. That when reason/diplomacy is chosen life flourishes. People create, produce, trade, freely associate and basically build civilization. When force is chosen you get war, destruction, poverty, misery.
Government's primary role in society, in my opinion, is to remove the element of force from civil existence so that all interpersonal relations are consensual (there are edge cases - the parent/child relationship or the extremely ill etc. but I need to scope cap somewhere).
The concept of rights derives directly from this concept. They are the recognition that rational people can cooexist peacefully if certain aspects of the human experience are recognized and protected. Those aspects being that in order to survive as a human being your tools are reason and action; you need to be able to think freely and you need to be able to act in accordance with your rational judgements. The infringement of a person's rights is fundamentally interference in either the ability to think (freedom of expression / conscience) or the ability to act (freedom to own and acquire property, freedom to travel, freedom of association etc.)
This means that government's entire domain is force. It is the entity that gets to determine the rules around when the application of force is allowed. It is the entity that gets to step in when you and I can't agree on what the definition of "assault" is and one of us calls the cops.
Businesses ought to exist entirely outside of the domain of force. Business is what happens when you remove force from society and people are able to think, create, develop, produce and trade freely without gangs and thieves and thugs interfering.
Where things get blurry is when you marry government and business. But always remember that business operates under the rules that government creates. The more incentive there is for business to care about political policy, the more lobbyists and corporate interest groups you will create but that's the framework you're creating. Government forces it through laws. Business is just playing by the rules that you voted for.
Governments are elected every now and then by large sums of people as a package deal for handling a number of issues, and only one is in place. Products and companies exist in multiples and regardless of how big they are, they're still more targeted, and you the consumer get to choose directly and every day.
