> grant a tiny elite the power to allocate resources of society simply because they got promoted...
They can only allocate the resources of the company, not society. And they get selected based on their track record of effective allocation of those resources.
Democracy has never demonstrated efficient allocation.
Look up the "Totalitarian Bet" by Guardian columnist.
The basic idea is that in a
totalitarian society elites hoard knowledge and access to technology to support their own position, the common example is Saudi Air Force pilots are basically all princes.
democracy and openness and metritocracy leads to better people in positions of influence, and leads to organisations that are more mission focused and more flexible.
But it's a bet. There is no reason to believe that the military industrial complex of democratic mid-century USA is down to democracy or just luck.
But is "our society" defined by liberal democracy? And if so place our bets on liberal democracy
There's little indication that democracies are more flexible. The politicians spend all their time arguing with each other, eventually reaching an ineffectual compromise.
"more mission focused", I seriously doubt. More like "everyone pulling in a different direction."
> And they get selected based on their track record of effective allocation of those resources.
I've seen too many managers fail upwards to truly believe that is true in general. In plenty of companies connections are just as or more important than being effective at allocating resources.
This is what motivates me in my ... admittedly belief.
Of course politics will always play a huge deciding part in resource allocation. But if the allocation is based on a small "elite" then it looks a lot like historical societies - and we think we have moved beyond that.
If we believe in democracy for our civic society, if we believe in the Totalitarian Bet, why not apply democracy to the companies that are too big to fail?
It is also why I suspect founder led companies do very well (if the founder is good enough) - the internicine politics just gets overwhelmed by the founder picking and choosing - but history has taught us that it's vanishingly rare to find such people, to place them in the elite and have them continue to make excellent decisions over decades.
Transparency and competition drive efficient allocation, which are things encouraged in a _true_ democracy. All other forms of governance are strictly more inefficient.
That's more or less my argument in the EU - it's something federal USA has stopped noticing but it's clear in Europe.
You can become leader of Hungary by wrapping yourself in the patriotic history of the mid-European medieval struggles - struggles that carry cultural weight in the countries that bore the brunt of the middle ages. But talking about medieval knightly charges just gets a laugh in Sweden whose cultural resonance is more gunpowder and forest rights.
Any pan-European agreements need to be appealing to commonly held incentives - those almost always look like "greater common wealth, growth, consumer protection"
The Federal US has a similar setup and I think can be found at root of many of the wedge issues troubling the US
Democracy is not required for a free market to function well.
Running a company as a democracy pretty much requires every employee to be an equal owner of it. That doesn't work well. Sometimes a fearless leader, like Jobs, Gates, or Bezos, who gets things done without endless debate and compromise.
Who defines what "functions well"? And how do you define "free market"?
I'm not being pedantic, these questions require important distinctions.
Arguably, the US has the "freest market" out of all, but it also has rules and is not entirely "free".
You can make the case that you only have a "market" if you have transparency, many buyers and many suppliers. Our economy nowadays becomes less and less of a free market. Big companies buy off competition, reduce the amount of suppliers as well as transparency. They don't want an informed customer and they don't like competition. See where it got us.
Democracy is absolutely necessary to maintain a market.
They can only allocate the resources of the company, not society. And they get selected based on their track record of effective allocation of those resources.
Democracy has never demonstrated efficient allocation.