The power a government has over you, and the power your employer has over you, are totally different.

The government is legally authorized to separate you from your possessions, your freedom, and even your life in extremis. Your boss can't do any of that and if they try the government should stop them.

Some people believe democracy is what prevents the government from punishing you capriciously, or allowing corporations to just do whatever they want to you. So they are willing to die to defend it.

I would say traditional liberal ideals are closer to what they'd want to defend than democracy itself, and I don't 100% agree in either case, but I can see the point of view.

As a person with family living under an actual dictatorship, I’d like to point out some differences.

You can leave a job. You’re generally not killed for poor performance at a job.

I’ll stop there. I think that’s enough to shatter this very poor comparison.

Not sure I'd die for democracy.. it's a popularity contest where 80 year old millionaires compete to see who looks best in a suit.

Freedom, sure. But that's not the same thing.

You think working for a corporation is the same as living under a dictatorship?

I have a problem with the willingly in this thought.

The issue is that people are pretty unwilling to be homeless or starve if there's an alternative (no matter how terrible).

Working is the worst way to prevent yourself from starvation and homelessness except for all of the others.

The overlap of people willing to let themselves be beat down and exploited at work, and the people that would actually fight and die for democracy is slim to none.

Lots of people are not willing to die for democracy, some even fight against it out of ignorance or powerlust.

That's not what dictatorship means

It's... not weird at all. Democracy is a form of governance that permeates all our lives and controls the state that has a monopoly of violence that can be used against us and take away our rights. It's not something we can opt-out of so it's important that everyone has a say in it.

Small groups forming to do things like commerce or non-profits or whatever are completely voluntary and can't take our rights away. The fact is, these authoritarian-like structures are efficient and effective. Even employee-owned corporations tend to organize this way by electing the officers.

Would love to see more companies experiment with democratic organizations though.

No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.

-George Patton

We have a choice not to work?

On which border is it common to cross from a democracy to a dictatorship for work?

Careful you might start thinking about democratizing the workplace. If you start doing that you might wind up one of us filthy syndicalists

Frankly, I'm a coward. There's very little I'd be willing to die for and democracy certainly isn't one of those things.

You can go to work for yourself, you can’t fork your own country.

The dominant cultural ideology blinds us to the obvious contradictions.

I worked for a cooperative once. It had its upsides. But it eventually lost steam because of the diffusion of responsibility. At its peak it had a strong core council of 5-7 official members looking after it and it flourished. But it was somewhat of a labor of love and over time they had kids, moved away, etc and eventually there just weren’t enough committed core people to keep it going.

A small business generally has one person who is ready to do absolutely whatever it takes to make it a success. This can be game changing. All their skin is in the game. If they have to skip a paycheck they do. If they have to work all night they do.

You know, a dictator, as you call them -_-