(It) seems to me that a healthy culture like a healthy ecosystem requires the balance of many guilds in tension and in harmony, each with its own world-model, jargon, skill set and so on;  if one guild (priestly, warriorly, tradely, whatever) manages to take over and impose just one mental model and language on all activities and thinking, that model will be inappropriate for many/most of those activities and there will be some kind of dysfunction (even beyond the obvious dysfunction of a power grab of this kind).

I like your multiple guild/multiple ethos model.  In some ways the domination of government and education by business interests has been facilitated by the idea of the separation church and state, as that concept came to be applied.  The ideal was important to contain the tendency of religious leaders to impose sectarian policies on a society with many sects and was not even very effective in that regard.  

Yet, beginning in the post Civil War period in the USA, college boards of trustees came to be dominated by businessmen rather than clergy.  Society came to be seen as the devalued and therefore manipulable "soil" in which businesses could grow.  However, this was a  de facto occurrence which was not consciously acknowledged or discussed.  Officially, we were a "Christian Nation."  Sometime after WW II we grudgingly became a Judeo-Christian Nation, at least in the major population centers.  But we have not figured out what to think or do about the Buddhists, who really don't buy in to the theistic deity approach but are discrete enough not to make a big deal about it.

The curse of our times is being ruled covertly by businessmen, by way of the revolving door between the boardroom and the assembly house.  People should choose their career, imho -- to get rich in business or to serve their community as policy makers, peacekeepers and mediators in government -- and the two roles cannot be mixed without disastrous corruption, enormous temptations to the misuse of position and privileged information to which few people would be immune.

IMO, separate career paths for politics/government service, and business would be a helpful but not sufficient condition for proper reform.  But even more important is seizing back the control of the financing of election campaigns.  That is what prevented, for instance, the US Senate from passing the Durban ammendment to allow bankruptcy judges to cram down mortgage reductions on lenders.  It is what will stand in the way of any meaningful reform of the malignant and bloated financial services industry.  It may be that for real reform both public financing of elections and separate career paths are necessary.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."