Back in the day, a Yale law professor named Charles Reich wrote a bestselling book called The Greening of America. His masterwork topped The New York Times best seller list and drew a ton of popular attention. Reich argued that American society was undergoing a major shift in cultural awareness (He used "consciousness," a word that no longer seems to be in vogue) and opined that this would lead to a major and lasting revitalization of our deepest cultural norms and values. It was a noble thought.

It is possible that just about every major social and political mega-problem we're now facing can in some way be traced to varying degrees of corporatization — from renewed interest in war as a solution to international relations to Big Pharma's capture of health care to the influence of dark money in our political system to a climate crisis fed and ignored by Big Energy.