low-yield nuclear take: there is a sense in which he's right. while national governance can be democratic, corporate governance often is not: firms are often run as teapot dictatorships in which leaders are accountable to as few people as possible. 1/n https://twitter.com/BadEconTakes/status/1252701730489286656

"the dictator's handbook" covers this, with examples. new corporate officers will often purge the board of directors and replace them with loyalists, just as dictators do when they overtake a country. 2/n

moreover, company bylaws are often written (or can be ignored) in such a way that officers are accountable to their hand picked cronies, not shareholders (and certainly not customers or employees). 3/n

in theory, competition should override this: firms should compete to attract laborers, and customers should force firms to provide the best value. however, there is a natural asymmetry between labor and capital that places labor in a weak negotiating position. 4/n

moreover, institutional investors (which you probably almost never think about) can exert de facto monopoly power by controlling large shares of many companies in the same industry. weyl and posner's "radical markets" (chapter 3, i think) covers this. 5/n

clever institutional investors can (and do) put pressure on corporations to raise prices without raising the quality of the ultimate product.

the concentration of money in fewer and fewer hands, who (being fewer) can effectively coordinate, is antithetical to democracy. 6/n

what i think liberals can do is make the case that this is antithetical to capitalism, too. if that means making capitalism look a little bit like socialism (workers' co-ops, strong labor protections, strong anti-trust law, limiting institutional investors, etc.), so be it. n/n