>And suppose the amount is as trivial as you propose. Then why does a multi-trillion dollar conglomerate need that pittance from a million ordinary people?

Reminds me how in the 1970s and 1980s there used to be these ads in the back of magazines in which a person who supposedly became a millionaire sold pamphlets for $5 telling his secrets to success. The obvious question was why such a successful person would need $5 from poor people (unless that was one of his secrets to success, I suppose).