maybe thats part of the problem, I recall a trend where employees bought out the company and ran it. Not sure what happened to it.

We can't let the great unwashed own the company and run it for God's sake. /s

That's what happened.

There have been a only few instances of employee ownership of large corporations, never any sustained trend. United Airlines employees took over majority ownership in 1994 but that never really worked and they ended up bankrupt.