Are Corporates the new Government?

You can't have failed to have noticed that there's a new PROTUS and he's 'Big in business'.  So big in fact that all of his inner circle have also been 'Big in Business'.  It appears that the socialist-light policies enacted by the previous PROTUS are being quickly dismantled so that businesses can get back to doing business.

Is this a good or a bad thing?  The headlines certainly indicate that it's anything BUT a good thing as job security, employee rights, environmental safeguards are reportedly whittled away.

Big mergers, according to Simon Caulkin writing in Professional Manager are merely an investment in political power and influence.  According to The Guardian Corporates are utilising the 'dark arts' to rule governments.  

Is this a moral panic as the hard-fought gains (according to one section of society) are being destroyed in the stroke of a pen and we return to the days of corporate greed.  I'd argue that corporate greed has always been with us and the dystopian future of businesses running the world  has come one step closer to actually being recognised as such.  The reality is that since trade began, since manufacturing transformed the world's economy, since technology revolutionised working practices, big business has always ruled.  

It's taken a small number of influential, highly regarded people, the philanthropists of the Victorian Age, the Al Gores, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates of today to hold them in check, ex-corporate heads and political high achievers with the values required to put checks and balances in place. Through dint of sheer energy or legislation they've have the chance to temper the testosterone fuelled, power hungry CEOs - and their shareholders.

Unfortunately it also only takes one person who can galvanise the energies of those who have been left behind by these revolutions, who are not equipped to take up new roles or the resources to move to different parts of their own country or further afield and that look for someone to 'make it right'. That one person with the wave behind them can similarly step in like the fox in the hen-house and enable the corporate greed to resurface again.

So what do we do about the Corporates that are blatently taking over the world?  The FSB say that SMEs are the engine of economic growth so how do we nurture them and enable them to act as a balance to the mega-companies that have so much power and influence?  Because if we don't then we might as well forget about political elections for truly the Corporates will rule the world.