This is the difference between the United States and the Confederate States of America....
THis is much different than the League of Nations and the UN. Both of these are more like confederations rather than federations. The UN president can't tell one memberstate would to do; the UN and its predecessor really don't have authority or power to do anything without the backing of the nations. His authority is subject to that of the nation states. An example of this would be the CSA.
This is the other way around. The Central global government have power over the local governments. In the Civil War reference, this would be the Union...
I truly think that economics(business) and government are very intertwined; neither can really function well without the other for the betterment of the people. If you have no government, but a very strong economy, then what you're saying about the corporate objectives being pushed is true. But if you have no large businesses (say from really strigent anti-trust laws, etc), but a government, then there are more economic problems, and thus the quality of life for the average person materialistically is very low.
Think Pre-Soviet (or perhaps Czarist) Russia, I doubt the serfs and peasants really had a good life materialistically. There weren't any real large employers, and there were less options around, but I bet there were a lot of smaller businesses and there was a reasonably strong government in place.
This becomes more true as the region and populace gets larger; a tribal society might not need big businesses, but I'd like to see how modern day United States would survive without big businesses. There are many tasks which you can't simply do with small businesses; such as having a transcontinental railroad or building complicated machinery (for use in the military or medical fields, for example). Sure, smaller businesses can and have arranged themselves into a larger collective force to accomplish some of these things, but what you really have then is a big business focused on a single venture for a limited amount of time then...