Bubbles of Tyranny

Respond to the statement that Bubbles of Tyranny form within any democracy lacking sufficient strength or a sufficiently pervasive reach. Left unchecked, these bubbles always multiply and expand to fill and thus defeat the entire democracy.

“Bubbles of tyranny” emerged as an idiom some time after this post as referring to the shepherding and isolation of ideological camps on the internet by the simple-minded algorithms of social media platforms. My meaning here is much broader and does not depend on a particular level of technology.

Because of the strict, hierarchical command structure of corporations as they are defined in law today, or of the tribes, fiefdoms or dukedoms of ages past, democratic processes cannot survive within them. These organizations always devolve into dictatorships intolerant of original ideas, meritocratic promotions or competition for authority or power from the lower echelons.

To counter this dynamic, the dictatorial corporate business structure should be taxed out of profitability and ultimately outlawed in favor of cooperative business structures built on the sharing of profits, of power and of ideas, and on the allotment of credit and rewards for innovation to the originators within the organization of the specific ideas or inspirations that led up to them.

To say that “co-ops don’t innovate” or that they are doomed to fail for lack of focus, efficiency or equitable incentive structures is like saying that democratically organized countries are doomed to fail versus dictatorships that reward only those at or near the top of the political hierarchy or command structure under which they are run. It need hardly be said, when this cavalier sentiment is surfaced and exposed for proper scrutiny, that it is widely understood to be patently absurd, and has been since the Age of Revolution spanning 1775 to 1849. The Age of Enlightenment spanning 1687-1789 that inspired it succeeded in reviving the Classical Age of Greece spanning 480-323 BCE and the Roman Republic spanning 509-27 BCE, upon which our present democracies are in large part founded. The contra argument has been tried and proven abysmally flawed. We commonly associate these failures of strictly hierarchical organizations devoid of checks and balances with the thousand year religious Dark Ages spanning the 5th to 15th centuries that so rudely interrupted this long, steady rise to the sustainable governing organizations of the future.