1) On odesk.com, when you post a job, you have a radio button 'freelancers and companies can apply' and 'only freelancers can apply'. There isn't even an option 'only companies can apply'! While IRL, most companies outsourcing some work would not even talk to a person, normally a contract can be signed only with a company.
2) On elance.com and odesk.com, there is a complex set of rules (which are anyways frequently broken or circumvented) which prevent companies from impersonating individuals, while there are no rules against the contrary - individual acting as a company - and nobody seems to be interested in doing so. All contractor companies are real, but many individual contractors are fakes, indicating that the market prefers individuals. While IRL, it is common for people to open one-person companies (and there was even a popular HN article about it, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6727378, a few days back), and that seems to work, while companies pretending to be people is unheard of.
3) Overwhelming majority of work on all freelance sites is done by individuals, while IRL, this is not the case, there is almost always a corporate entity between customer and person doing the job.
Why? In your opinion, what in this market is broken causing such a strong difference from the 'normal' run of things we see in the economy as a whole? Or isn't it the problem, just a new norm?
Why on freelance sites, market isn't friendly to companies, and how to fix?