The ultimate thing to understand about humanity right now is the stakeholders in decisions.

I'm going to divide literally every organization and person on earth into 2 groups. Large multinational corporations and other.

Other * literally every person on earth * non profit organizations * city governments * state governments * governors * senators * presidents * medium sized companies * basically every entity you can think of

Large multinational corporations * Apple * Exxon * General Electric * Wal-Mart * Chevron * Bank of America * HSBC * Procter & Gamble

* You get the idea

Now getting back to the point, why is it that we continually see these large multinational corporations pushing around literally everybody and everything even entire countries.

It's because they have something that nothing else in the history of humanity has ever had * Something large worth fighting for (regulations that let them rake in profit) * The organization to create a plan and execute it (A very small number of people hold almost all decision power) * A large amount of resources to execute their plan.

And while they are not the largest organizations in the world, that title remains with governments of countries, you have to realize that democracy requires taking power and spreading it around so that no one person can cause too much damage.

but spreading power around creates a problem

A company can come in and they don't need to overpower/bribe/threaten/coerce every member of government, only a select few. Companies only need to overpower a decent minority and they'll end up with more power than anybody else.

It doesn't matter that there are literally hundreds of millions of people living around the earth that these companies affect and exploit with the regulations they force through our governments. We can't fight against them because as individual people with day-to-day lives and worries and attention spans we can't execute a focused plan with a large amount of resources behind it (lobbyists, lawyers, campaign contributions, letters, and constant reinforcement).

The only long term solution is to make it illegal for a corporation to try to influence government or the governed, in any way no matter how slight.