The Constitutional amendment they're not debating, but perhaps should be

Nova Spivack of Minding the Planet has a thought-provoking essay proposing a new Constitutional amendment: The Separation of Corporation and State.

Before some of on the right you roll your eyes (you know who you are!), I'll cut to the chase and excerpt the heart of his argument, which comes with a disclaimer:

I am a dedicated capitalist; I have benefited from the free market and I believe in self-organization, creative chaos, and bottom-up emergent solutions to complex distributed problems. So I would not advocate restraining capitalism to such an extent that it loses its edge. Capitalism is a reflection of nature, of evolution itself - a basic creative process that leads to innovation, growth, optimization, and development that can benefit individuals and societies in incalculable ways. Without capitalism democracies lack energy and cannot thrive, grow, innovate and reproduce. Yet at the same time, I believe deeply in democracy and the basic principles that America stands for. Without democracy - true democracy - capitalism becomes malignant, destructive, and cannibalistic.

I would not want to live in a non-capitalist society - how boring, how complacent, how uninspiring and uncreative that would be. But neither would I want to live in a world controlled by corporations that are solely conditioned by profit motives - that would be a world raped of every natural resource, polluted to the point of being uninhabitable, commercialized and dumbed-down to the point of total conformity and cultural decay -- a world completely for sale and thus completely sold out.

Because neither of these extreme futures -- democracy without capitalism, or capitalism without democracy, is acceptable, I believe it is time to really address this issue of the Separation of Corporation and State as a society, and as a marketplace. Because if we don't find a new balance between capitalism and democracy we will lose both.

Spivak's proposal is predicated on the separation of Church and State, arguably the most important feature of American democracy:

If there was no separation of Church and State in America, both our government and religious institutions would suffer. Similarly, in the case of the tension between capitalism and democracy, the only viable, sustainable, and effective path is to maintain a very precise balance. If this balance is not maintained, neither democracy nor capitalism can function with full effectiveness and everyone loses in the long-run. Short-term thinkers may gain temporary benefits by taking advantage of imbalances of this nature, but only at the expense of the many, and ultimately even at their own expense.

There's much more and it's reasoned and worth considering. Definitely read the whole thing.