Reply #2: Shrewed marketing and gullibility...

[Solon]

That is the crux of the problem, back in those days it was the manufacturers that held the purse-strings and the power over the government, nowadays it is the service based businesses that do the same. Unlike back then, today we do not have another industry that will save us on the horizon of unlimited growth, back then it lead to the Great Depression, today it will lead to THE Depression. It wasn't until Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle" that finally lead to the government to actually take seriously the abuses of the corporation, and even then it was too little, too late.