This country likes to talk at length about how much it values democracy, as a core concept. For a long time, I’ve said that this strikes me as strange, when two out of three of our major cultural institutions are (mostly) based around (substantial) autocracy.

That is, while we pursue democratic government, we maintain autocratic military (in service to a democratic government at least, which, I think, makes sense) and autocratic businesses (which we know we have alternatives to, but rarely pursue).

This is why I have always been opposed to the rhetoric of “running the country more like a business”. To me, that sounds like “run the country autocratically”.