Just wait for the cyberpunk crossover with The Handmaid's Tale. This is the worst timeline.

"It's okay, I'll enjoy my retirement long before corporations start buying literal states, springing up company towns, employing workers younger than my current children, and buying and selling people via contracts, whilst waging open war with drones and wageslave conscripts." --Most Politicians as they watch their green line go up, probably

Right, so whether they "can't" or simply "won't", either way they don't, and the problem just grows and grows with no bounds.

In the past, let's use the USA as an example, we've had both "business" side-by-side with "government", with the role of the latter often thought of as to balance and foster the true spirit of the former. Keeping the worst excesses of business at bay, and doing things like scientific research that spurs innovation within the realm of business, were both considered the realm of government.

But times change, and now the role of government is getting smaller and smaller, while the roles of corporations are looming larger and larger - there are even businesses that provide a place to live for their employees!

Anyway, businesses were never democratic, but it used to not matter so much when business was merely the place where you worked, while government took care of you at home. Whereas now, they are taking on increasing prominence in people's lives in terms of dictating every single aspect of life - e.g. government healthcare (Medicare & Medicaid) is dying (being killed) off, leaving only business as the provider of "healthcare" available to people - which is what ObamaCare was trying to fight against.

So we still "have" democracy... technically, it's just that it matters less and less as the role of government is continually diminished, and powerful corporations greedily take all the power available unto themselves.

Always has been.

Perhaps.

Though the people involved may not recognize it as such, bc who actually stops to think prior to acting? Or even does so afterwards? And especially not during.

And those who do, do not act. While again, those who act, do not think.

It's hardly even their "fault" bc the skills involved are entirely distinct. Should we blame the professor or philosopher for not conveying what they "know" to others? Some very few are taking up that charge, e.g. Kurzgesagt, and John Oliver, but even the more intellectual audience here on Lemmy downvotes those as much as upvotes, with both being single digits so really, on the whole, nobody cares (I get it: people here primarily like Linux, and everything else is mostly a side show:-). (Also even this much of what I've said reveals a further layer of complexing: are these "actors", in the political sense, or "thinkers", or really are they not enactors of the thinkers, specializing in the conveyance of information? anyway it's definitely not a binary distinction here, even if it may not quite be a full spectrum either)

Or should we blame the politician for not thinking? But it's really not their job - as the skills required to motivate others, plus get elected in the first place, in a "democracy" and especially a plutocracy, are again entirely distinct. That's what counselors are for.

Similarly should we blame the front-line battalion commander for not winning the war? Their job is to do, not so much to strategize - it is the tactician who devises those, but in absence of actual facts, how can those tactics be adjusted to the real-world situation?

Mostly I keep coming back to it being "our" fault - as in all of us - for allowing things to happen. A true team effort of fuckery. But when we aren't distracted by wars externally, we turn our lusts internally and eat our own... and we know that, so then... why didn't we account for such? And that's as far as I can see. Others who see farther, more clearly, seem to be running the show. So perhaps it was always going to be thus? Our naivety constantly being burned away in confrontation with real-world facts, never willing but nonetheless always learning, not desiring to yet always changing,

I am not smart enough to understand what is going on. And therein lies the rub: every smart person realizes their ignorance and failings, whereas the actors who are not bothered by pangs of conscience are free to move forward without hindrance, hence can go so much further and faster than their competition.