I knew you did not use the word conflict, I did so in an analogy to another philosophical thought experiment called the state of nature. I was trying (and clearly failing, my fault) to illustrate a logic issue you were having; just because we have regulations and companies do nefarious things does not mean that the regulations
cause the nefarious things.
>the reason nefarious people can use companies as tools to do nefarious things on a large scale, the kind of scale that affects a large number of people, is government regulation.
You are wrong. Companies do nefarious things on a large scale and would even at peak efficiency in a free market because it is more efficient to cause harm than it is to take steps to prevent it.
Looking back to less regulated times in the US may be illustrative.
When there was no government regulation for river cleanliness, companies routinely polluted the rivers. They did not do this because of the government regulation that, again, did not exist. They did it because it is a lot cheaper to dirty a river than it is to install the mechanisms to keep it clean, and the benefits to the company from keeping the river clean, barring regulatory oversight, do not suffice to balance the scales.
Similarly, in countries with less stringent regulations companies pollute and cause widespread harm.
The acceptable level of pollution in a free-market system is much higher than the desirable level, because until a tipping point where the company's sales are impacted they will continue to pollute. The equilibrium point is lowered through regulation. That's literally what it does.