system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Corporations almost never act in the interest of the public and would pursue extremely unethical and illegal practices to increase profits if not prevented from doing so by government regulations.

My view: Corporations almost never act in the interests of the public, and often inflict great damage upon society and the environment in order to maximize profits, and must be regulated in order to protect the public. For instance, Volkswagen emission-testing controversy. Their recent vehicles have been found to be fitted with a mechanism that is able to detect that the vehicle is being emission tested  and switch the engine to an ultra low emission, high efficiency mode to pass the tests. When the vehicle was not being tested, the engine switched back to a higher performance but also far dirtier fuel burning configuration. This is a prime example of a company knowingly harming the environment for the purpose of increasing profit. There are countless other examples of other corporations participating in unethical and often harmful behaviors to increase profits and please the shareholders.

Update: my view has been changed. Not all corporations are monolithic embodiments of evil and it was foolish for me to generalize in the manner that I did. However, I still firmly believe that government regulations are the only thing that keep corporations from using heinous business practices for profit. If not regulated, businesses will devolve into profit producing machines that have no regard for ethics or the environment.
gpt
I want to take an indirect approach to this one by clarifying something: what do you mean when you say "the public interest?"  It seems like you've defined it very narrowly to mean protecting the environment.  While environmental concerns can certainly present a conflict of interest between money-making and public good, they represent only a tiny fraction of the net effect a major corporation can have on the globe.

What about economic growth?  Employment?  Lowering the cost of goods and services you take for granted?

Corporations are major drivers of prosperity, and *with prosperity comes the luxury of caring about, say, the environment.*  You'll notice that the slumdog neighborhoods of India don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about pollution when they don't have the certainty of clean water.

TL;DR: Corporations do a lot of good things that you're not considering, and often those good things can give people the luxury of addressing some of the bad things you *are* considering.

(And a quick sidebar, because it's a pet peeve of mine: it looks like you're using the word "corporation" as a synonym for "large company," which is inaccurate.  A corporation is defined by it's government-granted liability shield.)