Legislators are beholden to the individuals and corporations who provide mountains of cash for election campaigns. The solution to that problem is public financing of elections. But the full answer is a bit deeper than that. Profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. It takes precedence over community well-being, worker health, public health, peace, environmental preservation or national security.
Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth.
On this depends relationships to investors, to the stock market, to banks and to public perception. The growth imperative also fuels the corporate desire to find and develop scarce resources in obscure parts of the world. Corporations place every person in management in fierce competition with each other. Anyone interested in a corporate career must hone his or her abilities to seize the moment. This applies to gaining an edge over another company or over a colleague within the company.