The idea of corporations started with organisations granted monopolies in a particular endeavour by the crown - think of the British East India Company, or the orginal bubble, the South Sea company whose manipulations of government debt and parliamentary bribes make Enron look amateurish.
Many companies today subsist on similar government-backed monopolies - think of the companies that 'own' the broadcast spectrum, or telephone networks. Both of these are under threat from grass roots networks based on open-spectrum protocols like 802.11.
The economies of scale don't hold true when people will no longer put up with identical products, and can connect with each otehr to express their dissatisfaction.