If search engines really wanted to fix this--and it would require Google and Bing taking action, not smaller search engines--they could de-list any company that engaged in SEO so that nothing from that company showed up in searches at all.
That would just change how SEO worked, since the old methods would be less optimal. Search engines have to rank results somehow, and whatever that is there's going to be some way to game it.
Maybe I should have said that any attempts to game ranking--versus actually creating content (e.g., no repackaged content)--would result in being blacklisted until such content was removed.