It seems a sure bet that Jean-Jacque Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville would probably like to observe and comment on the development of the American form of democracy.  Freedom, liberty, inequality and the social contract are even more relevant today than then, as the limitations of contemporary democratic governments have become more and more visible.  And, the limitations of party politics today make a revision of our form of governance almost impossible compared to then. 
 
Today, the public has virtually no influence in the course of legislation, which is manipulated by large, moneyed organizations and corporations.  The antiquarian nature of our democratic process has not kept pace with the increase in education levels and public awareness over the last two centuries.  What has come about is a natural consequence of the diminished role of the public to participate in the option-development and choice-making of those options with their public executives.  It is not a situation of “They (the public) deserve what they get” because the slow creep of political evolution favors those who have more to gain than by those who lose.  The public has lost out on its right to exercise its self-determination simply because the structures of American democracy are so out of date.  Those structures favor control by the few that is observably and measurably authorized by the votes of the public.  It all looks so legitimate!  It is no wonder that the once 10% has now become the 1%. 
 
Where the right of self-determination in a democracy crosses roads with the decrease in power by the 1% is at the point where the public at large, and as individuals, takes on more social, political and economic/financial responsibilities.  Remember this, the 1% is also composed of individuals; and, they, too, would become far more responsible individually for their organizational and corporate actions, when those actions interfere with the right of self-determination of others as individuals and as a public.  

When the courts give corporations the identity of a legal individual, a “person,” then corporations must also be held accountable and responsible for their decisions and actions that inhibit, decrease or interfere with the rights of self-determination of other individuals and/or the public.  This is the path that societies and their governments must take to pursue the developmental evolution of social sustainability.  Applying the timeless and universal standard of the three values of social sustainability provides a fair and level field for the rational development for an evolved democratic process.