Yup, that's pretty much it. And it's the reason why I don't believe much of the hype about democracy, either: we live most of our lives in authoritarian institutions; why should politics be the one exception? Or, to put it another way, elections are a sort of carnival Saturnalia where you're told anything can happen, but after the election it's back to business as usual.

That's more or less the thesis of my second book, on the history of the company, from the VOC to Halliburton: there's this idea kicking around certain parts of academia that somehow corporate capitalism is related both to liberal ideals and to democracy, but on the inside, capitalist corporations are generally monarchies or semi-secret oligarchies, where workers who protest are quickly ejected.