Increasingly, I keep noticing that all human-corporation relationships are a rehash of older power structures and basically struggles for power in which people gradually keep losing it until they realize they are exploited and then finally start fighting back.
People started free and equal, then some specialized into warriors[0] and gradually built deeper and deeper hierarchical power structures, called themselves "nobles" and started exploiting the "commoners".
At some point people snapped, killed a bunch of them (French revolution, US was for independence, etc.) and decided they wanna rule themselves.
And then companies started getting bigger and bigger, with deeper hierarchical power structures, the "nobles" call themselves "executives" or "shareholders" and the people doing actual productive work are not longer "commoners", they are "workers"[1].
[0]: And thus controlled the true source of power - violence.
[1]: Ironically admitting that people who are not workers are not doing real work, they are just redistributing other people's work and money.
I don't like describing it as cycles because it is too simplistic and pretend it is inevitable, robbing people of agency.
I prefer to think of society as a system where different actors have different goals and gradually lose/gain influence through a) slow processes where those with influence gain more from people who are sufficiently happy to be apathetic b) fast processes when people become sufficiently unhappy to reach for the source of all real world influence - violence.
This happens because uneducated/dumb/complacent people let it happen. It can be prevented by teaching them the importance if freedoms and to always fight back. But that goes directly against the interests of those in power - starting from parents who want children to be obedient.
People started free and equal, then some specialized into warriors[0] and gradually built deeper and deeper hierarchical power structures, called themselves "nobles" and started exploiting the "commoners".
At some point people snapped, killed a bunch of them (French revolution, US was for independence, etc.) and decided they wanna rule themselves.
And then companies started getting bigger and bigger, with deeper hierarchical power structures, the "nobles" call themselves "executives" or "shareholders" and the people doing actual productive work are not longer "commoners", they are "workers"[1].
[0]: And thus controlled the true source of power - violence.
[1]: Ironically admitting that people who are not workers are not doing real work, they are just redistributing other people's work and money.