The people who own massive corporations have an interest in reducing the barriers between countries, because that allows them to expand their pool of potential customers and potential employees. A massive corporation provides massive wealth and power to its owners.
Especially in an age when people don’t pay for news media directly–meaning that people are not even providing a financial incentive for news outlets to cater to their interest–a news outlet provides control over public opinion and sentiment to its owner or dominant influencer, such as advertisers. Because of their massive wealth and power, the owners of massive corporations have the means of massively owning or influencing news media and therefore public opinion and sentiment.
The least corrupt and most ideal form of democracy grants the power of government to the people, that is, to public opinion and sentiment.
Power of government can be used to make some corporations more successful (and therefore greater generators of wealth and greater sources of power) with things like regulations (that for example burden competitors more), tax policy, special jurisdiction (for example, a government-granted/enforced monopoly), and affecting court cases (for example winning suits against competitors, dropping cases brought against them).
This means that there’s a potential feedback loop where rich and powerful people may be able to increase their wealth, corporate ownership, media control, and government power at a progressively more rapid rate to the point where a few of them have most or all of it.
At no point in this process is there any kind of selection for virtue, and in an environment where there are no disincentives for unvirtuous behaviour it should be expected that those who act without virtue (lie, cheat, steal, murder) will have an advantage over those who act with virtue.
There is also no guarantee at all that those who gain power this way consider themselves to be on the same “side†or “team†as the people they then have power over.
How could this process be detected? How would we know it’s happening?
It would result in a situation where the message from massive corporations, mainstream news outlets, and politicians is in alignment, and where the actions of these reinforce, support, and strengthen each other. There would also be a significant overlap in the ownership of massive corporations and mainstream news media outlets, and if that information is public knowledge then specific names could be found, and connections to politicians and top bureaucrats could be found.
To keep the sentences shorter, non-governmental organisations (charities, global entities), academic institutions, religious organisations, unions, ethnic groups etc. were left out, but it’s easy to see how ownership of or influence on these can be wealth and power accumulation multipliers.
Shutting down most businesses but leaving a few massive corporations running while at the same time providing money to a large number of people from the government is a transfer of wealth from the government (tax payers) to massive corporations, and is a situation that is very profitable to those who own those massive corporations.