One of the most common fallacies I see in political discussions is when people get caught up in the details, the rules, and lost sight of the larger picture and when the rules need to be changed.
Laissez-Faire was a theory about how to approach economics; it led to some disastrous things, and attempts were made to address some problems while keeping the good. For example, one of the leading experts in exploiting the rules of the laissez-faire stock market, Joe Kennedy (father of JFK), was made the first commissioner of the new SEC to fix that, and reportedly did a good job at fixing a lot.
Som people get so caught up in the 'absolute right' in some ideologies for something that they don't notice when the building is burning and change is needed. You can see the effects of bias when the problems in one side, such as the corruption of the CEO compensation system through the inefficiencies of shareholder oversight, get an 'oh, that's too bad, but what can you do' response, while suggested fixes get screaming murder responses, don't you dareeeeee lay a fingerrrrrr on the blessed rights of the corporations to run society into the ground!!!'. Sometimes I think that some in our society have had some sort of massive Stockholm syndrome where they don't think they're in charge as our founding fathers intended, and they instead fawn over the powerful corporations and protect them from any public oversight, while the corporations can do almost anything they like to pursue profit for the corporation, whatever the harm.
Then a movie/book like 'The Corporation' come along which help show the perspective of a larger problem, with its apt analogy to sociopathic behavior, and why that should not get its desire without any oversight by society.
People forget that the economy is less of an ideological system than an engine which needs the parts balanced and tuned. There are things we do to improve the performance of the economy, just as with an engine; there are things we do for some reasons which reduce the engine's performance, like our societal social programs with taxation; analogously, such as measures that reduce pollution from an engine.
The system relies on the proper incentives being in place for people from the janitor to the CEO. However, there isn't really a system where someone says 'what's right for society', instead there are mainly 'interests', from the labor unions to the corporate management, who compete for who gets how much, and it's luck of the draw how 'efficient' the system is.
That's the role of government at that point, to recognize where tweaking the rules can help fix a problem. At least, it's supposed to be, when the government represents the public, not only one part of the system.
The system has become corrupted, with CEO's having a culture of serving one another, on their boards with a nudge nudge wink wink oversight of the compensation they approve, and shareholders almost never being organized enough to actually push any concern. It was a recent news story when the Rockefeller got a shareholder vote on an issue they've been pushing for years, for Exxon, the company their grandfather founded, to do more in alternative energy. They lost, and it was a news story because it's so rare. The only time we regularly see the shareholder power is when one wealthy person or group can buy enough shares to force a policy; that's not the effective use of shareholder rights by ordinary shareholders, who typically have no idea who the board is, what they're doing, or how to get the other shareholders informed if they had a concern.
That's a system that's ripe for some improvement being made to better add a check and balance to the CEO's, who now use such techniques as hiring 'compensation consultants' to provide an 'independent' review of compensation - which seems to really be more of a phony stamp of approval for excess, since the consultants are so typically selected and paid for by the same people.
There are ways to limit the corruption without excessive intrusion on the corporation's efficiency. The question is whether the people who are stuck on the ideology can accept a solution, or will merely parrot why nothing should be done. It's hard enough to get our government representing the public; we don't need too many in the public supporting the wrong policies.
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