How about create a purchasers’ union and use your collective purchasing power to influence the behavior of companies, the way that companies use their power to control consumers.

I don’t have any problem with your union; in fact, I might join such a union. Just don’t force everyone to join it, which is what happens when laws are made for everyone as a result of the bad decisions of some.

I don’t know if such a union is legal to form… which I guess illustrates the point that @gonational is trying to make; too many laws can bite you.

First of all, I don't think it would be practically feasible to do this in the real world. As the old saying goes, if person A finds a way to get 100 million dollars by making 100 million people lose $1 each, he would have every incentive and tool to get that money and no one would have any incentive to stop him. Imagine the enormous costs of forming a purchasers' union, both direct and transaction costs. You can never convince enough people to join one to make it have any negotiation power.

Second and more importantly, the companies have found a way to circumvent one of the most important and fundamental pillars of our civilization, access to judicial system, through forced arbitration and class action waivers. If they had the power to get rid of something this fundamental, I am sure they will find a way to defeat any attempt to form a union like the one you advocate though laws, contracts, EULAs, etc.

The big problem with government and laws is that the more government and laws there are the more an advantage big companies have, since big companies are the only single entities that can stand up against large and complex structures such as government and legal systems.

Pertaining a purchasers’ union, I don’t mean something that would bureaucratically bogged down purchasing. I mean something like a club where you only purchase from those companies approved by the club, and everybody in the club gets to vote on which companies will be allowed to be purchased from.