There may not be any institutions in society that have a greater impact on the community than businesses. We spend most of our days working in them. We buy our goods from them. We use their services. Their presence or absence, and their manner of doing business impacts the development and environmental conditions in our communities. To a large extent, our standard of living and quality of life derive from businesses. Our psychological and emotional health, and indeed, our physical wellbeing, is often connected to the way businesses treat their workers, their customers, and the way they operate in the community. It simply makes no sense as a society to allow these institutions to function with nothing else in mind but the profit motive, and the satisfaction of shareholders who may not even live in the communities affected by the business, or who do not even work in the company.
When we talk about Democracy and democratic societies, why do we exempt business from the equation? How can a society be democratic while the institutions that play the greatest role in people’s lives are not even remotely democratic, and are instead the purest models of authoritarianism imaginable?