Re: The problem probably is profitability
"where corporations can do nearly everything people can, but they cannot be sent to jail."
This is true of any "body corporate", be that political parties, the sluggish control freak civil bureaucracy of government, the armed forces, the "intelligence" services, or corporations.
The problem is not profit as such (without which society wouldn't have a surplus to invest in health, technology, entertainment or higher living standards) but that the goals (and culture) of any organisation usually transcend any one person.
You mentioned HFT as a problem. And I'd agree that HFT is not about fair price discovery, but is actually purposed to rip off anybody else for the advantage of the HFT algo owner. But the problem is not profits, or bonuses per se, it is the culture of financial services, where they have collectively lurched from one criminal or immoral money making scheme to another, and the problem is that for all the fine words when they get caught, the industry chooses to keep any sense of propriety in the same dusty draw that stores its broken moral compass. In the UK, examples include private pension misselling, split capital trusts, endowment mortgages, CDOs, over leveraged LBO's, PPI, CPI, interest rate swaps, casino investment banking, payday loans, etc etc etc.
The persistent failure of the body politic to do what serves the electorate best, or even to listen to the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate is another example that is not particularly profit driven - there's an element of lining their pockets, but fundamentally it is about the culture of politics that says the job of electors is to elect me, and then to suck up whatever I do in their name.