This is why it is so important to make sure that concepts like rule of law and due process are enforces universally. The problem we have right now is that we have let things go uncorrected for too long.

All those "little" problems that never really resolved - the corporation trying to exploit a legal technicality to raise the costs for their competitors, the sociopath manager that ignores labor laws to try raise their profit margin, the politician getting kickbacks from the business in exchange for not passing some regulation - well... in most cases, we never rally addressed these problems properly. A few people got slaps on the wrist. Some were simply declared legal (and therefor moral to many people).

Operant conditioning[1] works in humans. We have spent the last several decades training people to see profit as the main goal. We have not been punishing the problems as people inevitably start to test the boundaries of the laws that supposedly limit what they can do. This combination of influences creates a situation where it is entirely rational for someone to start to themselves as being above the law and untouchable. They are simply extrapolating their own experience and observations.

So now we have a serious problem on our hands - some people have gotten so emboldened (and enriched), they have started to take the next step: actually writing this power imbalance back into the law and making their new aristocracy legal.

The core of this problem is fear, or the lack of it. Without a belief that there is at least some chance you could be caught, humans tend to act in a manner that reinforces their current situation. A decade ago I would have suggested that we simply needed to start throwing the book at the banks/business/politicians that misbehaved. We used to do that; politicians would resin if they were caught taking bribes, and corporations were occasionally heavily sanctioned or even forcibly dissolved for their crimes. Do you really believe any of that could happen today? I don't. We've had plenty of examples, from the "banking crisis" a few years ago, to the CIA getting away with murder and torture without even so much as a show trial.

No, if we had any intention of actually putting aside our differences and showing a bit of solidarity against the common enemy of corruption, we would have done it by now. Instead, were still acting like we have the luxury of being able to argue about our traditional political disagreements. Meanwhile, troops and the crony-capitalist apparatchik have been moving into more and more positions of power and influence.

The only way this tide is going to be turned back is... very unfortunately... when the people responsible regain their fear that they could could be caught, and the only way that fear will be restore is when they soe a real risk to their own survival. This is what the French understood when they got out the guillotines.

Of course, this is why the NSA has been working so hard to establish domestic surveillance and working with the FBI on parallel constriction: COINTELPRO never ended, and it's still the easiest way to break up any threatening social structure.

[1] see; Skinner's box on how conditioning can affect volition