I like thinking about the movement of the 'American system' as an evolution. Back in the day, all the stores were owned by a local person. You go to this store, that's Bob's store, he knows all about the fruit he gets, it's always the best, he goes over to the farmer's field and makes sure he gets the cream of the crop.

From here we have a huge population of stores (like neurons competing / cooperating to be heard). All over America, people are employed by running their own stores. Until one day, when a super store comes on the scene. It sells things cheaper than the other stores, and it has a bigger selection. Bob doesn't work there, but they have pretty much the same produce. Maybe the high school kid working there doesn't know the farmer where the fruit came from, but that's not so bad, I didn't know that farmer when I bought the fruit at Bob's. Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, our world is shifted. Instead of going to the store, knowing the owner, striking up a conversation, getting the latest scoop on the happenings of the neighborhood, we go to the store to accomplish a task. This is efficiency, right?

There's another shift too, and it's a personal shift (that might not happen to anyone).

I go to Bob's store, and I see he mismarked his apples, they should be a $1 a piece, but they're $0.10 a piece. I don't want to rip Bob off, I know him, he's a great guy. I say "Hey Bob, is this right?" He says "Oh no, that's a mistake, sorry about that." That's alright, you have to make a living and I don't want to make you lose money by purchasing something from you.

I go to a big box - they mispriced something. Maybe I can slip this by them, and the cashier won't know the real price... I mean, there's no real people to hurt, right? I'm not ripping anyone in particular off, just the company, which is a bunch of people, and no single one of them is going to be worse off because I purchase a mispriced item.

Any way that you can represent that this purchase is not part of the 'race to the bottom of the barrel', that's great. All the efficiency in the world will not make a place that's happy for people. Efficiency is inhumanity.

It's strange. A corporation is made up of people and yet it has its own drive, becomes like an organism composed of people in the same way that a human is composed of cells and a human's motivations are an emergent phenomenon independent of individual cells.

I'm reminded a bit of Kevin Kelly's 'what technology wants' that discusses how technology has a life of its own, but in the context of corporations. Both technology and corporations have some kind of abstract life that we as humans impart to them; they are products of our thought but do not necessarily always serve our best interests.

    1. Corporations cannot levy taxes on citizens.
    2. Corporations are not democracies (whereas, most
       modern governments are). Only the board of directors has a vote.
    3. Corporations often generate profits. Governments are
       not very good at this.
    4. Corporations (in most cases) cannot use force 
       against a private citizen (unless they are on the
       corporations property, for the US)
    5. Corporations pay taxes. Governments collect taxes.    

I could name more differences, but I'm done.

Most governmental entities are indeed "municipal corporations" but there is a serious dissonance between the typical for-profit corporation and government entity. The police, public works, or fire department, for example, are municipal corporations. However, these are not governments. They are just parts of the government.

Globalization is the real culprit here.

Before the 1970's or so, the US economy was isolated by tariffs and higher shipping costs. Since labor unions had a monopoly on labor in many jobs, workers were able to extract excellent wages from their employers.

Now that goods and services can move relatively freely across our borders, then labor unions can't demand higher wages, because the union isn't a monopoly any more -- industry has the option of relocating operations overseas.

The downward pressure on wages from this has resulted in a redistribution of wealth from labor to capital (I'm not on board with many of their policy suggestions, but the Occupy movement was on to something with their "top one percent" rhetoric).

As they lose earning power, people start to cut their budgets. When you're watching what you spend, price becomes more important than product quality or the feel-good vibes from shopping at a small local store. This allows the Wal-marts of the world to win.