Reply #12: good point about consolidation, but i'm not sure that's entirely true.

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the problem really is that companies have consolidated but governments have not. american companies can play 50 states against each other so easily now. move a plant or even just sign a piece of paper and suddenly you're subject to alabama laws instead of california laws. multinationals can shift income to evade taxes or threaten to move their headquarters to another country. this gives them too much clout, so governments, even the u.s. federal government, is too weak to effectively regulate.

if governments were to consolidate to a similar extent, e.g., place more regulatory authority at something more like the continent level, then governments would have the power to actually manage the corporations rather than the other way around.

of course, that would have obvious drawbacks for other reasons, but it could restore the world economy to basic capitalism instead of basic corporatism.