Either we have a single public sector overlord, or a variety of private sector ones.
As someone's slashdot sig held, years ago: "Under capitalism, man oppresses man; under Communism, it's the other way around."
I've traced it to a couple of late-1950s books, though their content isn't available online or searchable. (The Polish Review is at the Internet Archive, but text search doesn't find the phrase in 1959: https://archive.org/search.php?query=%22the%20polish%20revie...)
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22under+capitalism%2C+man+e...
A mob isn't a democracy; democracy is structured. If a democracy votes not to permit vandalism and then I vandalize something, I'm going to get sanctioned. A mob has no structure and no restrictions.
Democracy must be tempered with the recognition of individual rights. That, regardless of what the majority hold or believe, the individual has the sole prerogative to go far as his own ability allows him and on his own terms.
For many people capitalism is just a reincarnation of feudalism for the industrial age
Possibly concentrating all the power worsens the situation.
Dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies, and corrupt politicians worsen situations. Putting power back into the hands of the community and it’s workers shouldn’t do that.
Neither Communism and anarchism seem to model well the requirement for a management layer, or its effects.
These negatives are only transparent in capitalism, somehow.
At a narrower scale, who decides how many hours you work? Did you elect that person, or were they forced upon you? Sure, you could quit & move to another company, but I could say the same of a citizen living in a tyrannical country. It doesn't make that country any less tyrannical. And at whichever company you switched to, you still wouldn't have any democratic input in the workplace. If you don't like your overlord, you can take a mulligan, but it's not easy to switch jobs, and all you end up with is a new overlord.
Contrast this with a society in which investment was public and the workplace was democratic. Obviously it wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a substantial improvement on the current state of affairs in terms of overlords or the absence thereof.
I during work contract negotiation?
> Sure, you could quit & move to another company, but I could say the same of a citizen living in a tyrannical country.
That is not really true, for two reasons:
First, many tyrannical countries forbade that, with border guards shooting people trying to flee the country. That was common e.g. in eastern bloc communist countries.
Second, work is just one of many dimensions of life, so having multiple separate and independent 'domains' is better than all-encompasing state/community. Therefore, switching work is just switching one of several dimensions, not a complete change as leaving a country.
> but it's not easy to switch jobs, and all you end up with is a new overlord.
If you do not want overlords, you can just be independent contractor offering services to public. I do not know about US, but where i live there is permanent shortage of these (so no worry about getting customers) and i knew people who do that exactly because they would not fit to typical corporate structure.
> Contrast this with a society in which investment was public and the workplace was democratic.
Current society says a little about how corporations are internally organized. You could have democratic workers' cooperatives competing in the market. The fact that they make just a small part of economy suggest they are not really effective or interesting.
Actually there are a few reasons why we don't have many worker co-ops. First reason is, private investors want equity. VCs don't give out loans — they buy ownership shares, because that has the potential for a much bigger payout. That's incompatible with the co-op model. Similarly, banks are often tentative to give loans to co-ops, because they're so rare, despite co-ops tending to be slightly more stable than corporations when they do crop up. Thirdly, as a company grows, there's no incentive for the founders to give equal shares of ownership to new employees when it's acceptable for them to keep them for themselves. The less you can pay your employees, the better, obviously.
It's clear that in the absence of regulation, corporations are a more enticing business organization model than cooperatives. This doesn't mean that they're better — the free market sacrifices public well-being for private profit all the time. It just means that government intervention is required to promote them.
> many tyrannical countries forbade [emigration]
Do you think preventing your citizens from leaving is a prerequisite for tyranny? Because if not, then my point still stands, and the fact that an employee can quit doesn't make a corporation's governance just, in and of itself.
> you can just be independent contractor
The economy depends primarily on conventional employees. Some people can be independent contractors, but everyone can't, so even if being a contractor is more desirable, my critique of corporations is still very relevant. Besides, independent contractors often get treated even more poorly because of their unprotected status. Uber drivers are classified as "independent contractors," and this has led to Uber being able to treat them pretty poorly. So I'm not even convinced that contract work is necessarily better than regular employment.