The battle with the multinational companies may have been a lost one Why and what are the future prospects?

Answer 1

Calls for a high degree of speculation, in which no definitive answer can be gave.

It has been noted as far back as the late 19th century that large aggregations of wealth might give certain people and/or corporations a disproportionate power over governments and nations. The Wobblies were one such labor movement in response to that fear, broke up by the government - at the behest of large corporations - in the early 20th century.

A very crazy "balance" has been attempted ever since. Wherein the people through their elected representatives attempt to put more strictures over business, and where businesses in response put in all the more effort to bribe those who have putative control over them.

It has devolved now into a blended "alliance" in which none can truly distinguish between government and big business leaders, but can now only refer to "the powers that be" to connote those shadowy figures believed to direct nations.

What happens from here? And why?

Well, very few corporations, especially the mega ones, are individually owned. They are governed by Boards, and responsible to their shareholders, so in some sense, are democratically run, after a fashion. At least in the sense that any place is "democratically" run.

On the one hand, there are wildly speculative fiction stories about how eventually there'll be only one, two or three megacorps, and they'll either enslave us all, or have an Earth destroying war, or such.

And there's some who feel that maybe corporations will usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity, that being good for their bottom line.

The truth is no doubt in the middle. Corporations are actually run by the same entities that run democratic governments, monarchical governments, communist governments, etc. In other words, people. Some will be good, some bad, some indifferent, and life will no doubt go on regardless.

There will be various contending forces that attempt to check their power, and they themselves will try to check each others power. It will either work out, or there'll be a medium to large size war/calamity, and we'll start again.