It's not one person, one vote, so it's not democracy. It's very explicitly plutocracy (rule by money) as the operating principle of voting power is one share, one vote.
Except there's also a bunch of companies with special dual class share structures, where the founder gets way more voting power than everyone else and you can't even buy your way in. A lot of tech companies do this. This is, functionally speaking, an autocracy.
If you want an actual corporate democracy you would need to assign voting rights to everyone working at the company, aka build a co-op. Co-ops are a great corporate structure in a lot of cases but you can't really raise capital that way because VCs all want on your cap table, so all the big companies wind up being plutocracies.
It's one share, one vote. And you have a choice: You can ask the company to pay you (ie. apply for a job there), or you can pay for a share in the company. Either way, the decisions are made by those who pay. And that can include you — anyone and everyone has the right to start a company and to employ others, anyone and everyone has the right to ask for shares in the company as part of negotiating compensation.
I employed a painter a few months ago, and I decided what colour the kitchen now is.
Well, it matters a whole lot once you choose to bring up "One share, one vote" in response to "One person, one vote", since it shows that it's either wrong or shows a gross misunderstanding of democracy.
IMO it matters roughly as much as it's common. Do you know any country where, say, 10% of public companies have non-voting stock your can buy and voting stock your cannot easily buy? 20%? 50%?
A hypothetical country with multiple classes of citizens that had different rights and voting powers would not inherently be undemocratic. It's not something I'm in favor of but equality != democracy.
But said country would not fulfill "One person, one vote". Why should we weaken such fundamental ideas by allowing them to mean the opposite of their real meaning?
The same phenomenon is happening with "Opt-In by Default". This is newspeak.
You are asserting this "one person one vote" definition of democracy. I am questioning it. Where did this constraint on what qualifies as "real" democracy come from?
Keep in mind that the US is a democratic republic (thus a democracy) yet spent the first part of its history restricting who could vote based on (approximately) both gender and race.
> You are asserting this "one person one vote" definition of democracy. I am questioning it. Where did this constraint on what qualifies as "real" democracy come from?
I'm not asserting this definition. I'm arguing against the attempt at newspeak. If one share doesn't imply one vote (because there are different classes etc.), what is wrong with pointing out the obvious contradiction in "One share, one vote"?
> Keep in mind that the US is a democratic republic (thus a democracy) yet spent the first part of its history restricting who could vote based on (approximately) both gender and race.
I disagree that the US was a democracy while voting was restricted, but that's not really relevant. I'm not claiming that my view is right, or that anyone should be convinced - take that up with kmeisthax if you wish.
Yes, kmeisthax was the first to state it in this thread. On that basis you referred to a "gross misunderstanding of democracy" and later used the term "newspeak" leading me to believe that you hold that definition to be correct. You (and kmeisthax, and possibly others) are asserting it to the extent that a rationale for that definition has not been provided.
You cannot argue that a particular usage of a word is wrong while claiming that you aren't taking a position on the definition. And if you do take a position on the definition then you must be able to justify it.
Your view on the US and voting restrictions is directly relevant. It is what I am challenging. The common definition of democracy does not (to the best of my knowledge) include anything about equality. Those are entirely separate matters. The early US is widely recognized as a democratic republic (thus a democracy), albeit one with a great deal of institutional inequality.
I mean, North Korea also claims to be a democratic republic, but they also have "a great deal of institutional inequality" - to put it lightly. You have one guy with basically all of the power[0]. I think it would at least be safe to claim that North Korea is not democratic because of this.
As for a rationale as to why I would think this: Democracy literally means "rule by the people". If you have so much institutional inequality that one guy can out-vote or veto literally everyone else, then how do the people actually rule in any meaningful way?
I will admit that this argument is very voting-centric. Democracy does not mandate the use of voting. You could, for example, have a democracy in which the exercise of democratic power is mediated entirely through protests. This is how disenfranchised populations in the US and elsewhere wound up getting suffrage in the first place. But protests are also an incredibly inconvenient means of exercising power. When the people take power the first thing they do is usually to implement a voting mechanism anyway, so it's not inherently invalid to assume that democracy implies voting.
Of course, this doesn't work in reverse: voting does not imply democracy. Shareholder voting is a system that exists specifically to ensure the people who loaned the business its start-up capital can exercise effective and indefinite control over it. This is voting built to enforce plutocracy (rule by the rich). Furthermore, the other pseudo-democratic features of publicly held companies, like the fact that anyone can push through a shareholder resolution as a form of protest, are being slowly pared away. Texas in particular is trying to pull corporations away from Delaware on the basis that they'll shut up the small activist shareholders trying to do democratic protest in their board meetings or through lawsuits. Does this still sound like democracy to you?
[0] I am skipping over a lot of internal politics among North Korea's ruling elites, but I don't think it's necessary to go into any great detail other than to mention that such people exist.
Except there's also a bunch of companies with special dual class share structures, where the founder gets way more voting power than everyone else and you can't even buy your way in. A lot of tech companies do this. This is, functionally speaking, an autocracy.
If you want an actual corporate democracy you would need to assign voting rights to everyone working at the company, aka build a co-op. Co-ops are a great corporate structure in a lot of cases but you can't really raise capital that way because VCs all want on your cap table, so all the big companies wind up being plutocracies.