In essence, they are. Shareholders elect board members who hire for important roles.
This is similar to democratic governments. In no democracy will voters elect the Minister of Energy or Transport or Defense or Labor or the foreign secretary. This is chosen by the elected officials.
You claimed it's a democracy - obviously that's not the case.
If you think it shouldn't be a democracy, thats fine, but is just an opinion and not a factual claim.
You are, ofcrouse entitled to your opinion. Classically company consists of employees just like your body is made uo of organs. When you damage them by treating them badly, you damage the company.
In neoliberal idea employees are disposable and company is not harmed when you harm them.
Company is a separate entity that lives by itself, like a holy spirit, maybe it posseses the stock market on the 'brand value', i don't know.
The current stunt by Elon musk will show who is right, if Twitter does well when he is done destroying the talent pool, then you are right. If the company combusts, then you are wrong.
The USA "ideals" taught in school say that democracy and democratic republics are the best forms of government.... yet (almost) all our companies are autocratic dictatorships.
The actual machinery of government is not a democracy either. People who work at Federal agencies have to do what their managers tell them to do.
We elect the head of the executive branch. The rest of it is basically run like a bunch of corporations. We certainly don't elect the people who work at the IRS, for example.
The people to whom the org is responsible are the (Greek) demos[1]. For governments, this is the people. For corporations, this is the shareholders. Corporations are somewhat democratic WRT their demos.
"Meritocracy " isn't a thing, since the "merit deciders" (ala kingmakers) decide whatever they want. (Or the next question in that line: who decides what merit is and who has it?)
And, the gist also has very strong vibes of Ronald Wright's misattributed John Steinbeck's quote:
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
