I think that's a very rosy view of the olden days.
The rich have always had disproportionate power, but historically there was a lot more top-down violence. When the US started out, it was generally only land-owning white men who could vote, a pretty small proportion of "the people". It took decades past your "200 years ago" to get a vote just for the minority of people who were white men, and it was a very bumpy process. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorr_Rebellion
It wasn't until about 100 years ago that a majority of "the people" could even vote, and it was only 50 years ago that saw voting and economic rights applied reasonably equally to a majority of "the people".
I am happy to complain about what's going on today. But as bad as, say, Amazon is about union organizing, we shouldn't pretend that it's (yet) as bad as it was for most of America's history. And part of what makes today better is a strong-enough set of governments to push back against corporate malfeasance. As the police in this story clearly did.
The rich have always had disproportionate power, but historically there was a lot more top-down violence. When the US started out, it was generally only land-owning white men who could vote, a pretty small proportion of "the people". It took decades past your "200 years ago" to get a vote just for the minority of people who were white men, and it was a very bumpy process. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorr_Rebellion
It wasn't until about 100 years ago that a majority of "the people" could even vote, and it was only 50 years ago that saw voting and economic rights applied reasonably equally to a majority of "the people".
Or we could look at actual attempts at "the people" having a modicum of power: labor organizing. The US has a rich history of anti-labor violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_Uni...
I am happy to complain about what's going on today. But as bad as, say, Amazon is about union organizing, we shouldn't pretend that it's (yet) as bad as it was for most of America's history. And part of what makes today better is a strong-enough set of governments to push back against corporate malfeasance. As the police in this story clearly did.