Ultimately, what we have to deal with is how to rein in the domination of private power. Any governmental model we may come up with is going to continue to be subordinate until we are able to address this issue.
Corporations do not only have political power because they are able to finance the campaigns of politicians and spend massive amounts of money lobbying the legislature. They are powerful entities in and of themselves; the most powerful non-state actors on the global scene, to be frank. Roughly half of the largest economic entities in the world are corporations, not states. That gives them de facto authority even without direct interference in the process of government.
The CEOs of corporate giants like Apple or Google, Nestle or Bechtel, are akin to heads of state. The economic power they possess is often greater than the economic power of the countries in which they operate. As I have written before, these companies are essentially globalized, moveable feudal states. The CEOs are themselves under the control of their shareholders, who constitute a small group of people with ownership stakes in a diverse array of these floating corporate feudal kingdoms.
This is something we have to change.
I have mentioned in the past that previous rules in the United States stipulated that incorporation could only last for 10 years, and before it could be renewed, the corporation would have to prove that it had substantially contributed to the public interest. This rule should be re-enacted.
The ownership structure of companies needs to be reformed. The controlling shares of a company, say 51%, should always belong to the workers, not to uninterested, uninvolved outside shareholders. The number of shares earned by an employee could be calculated according to their tenure at the company, perhaps.
And there should be a cap on executive salaries; they should not exceed 12 times the wages of the lowest paid worker.
Every political revolution in the past that promised to usher in a society of equality and brotherhood, has failed to address the root causes of inequality; namely, the situation in which the creators of wealth and the owners of wealth are two separate segments of the population; indeed, not only separate, but conflicting.
What we need more than a political uprising is a revolution in the private sector.