Your argument seems to be that these "fiefdoms" aren't providing you anything and just taking a portion of your generated value. The obvious follow up is then: why don't you quit and go solo then? Clearly if they're entirely parasitic leaving is strictly beneficial to you.
I used the word "symbiotic" and not "parasitic", in a symbiosis there are mutual benefits: while labour is exploited and I only get a portion of the generated value I also get the benefit of not risking myself going solo, nor having all the stresses of having to cover sales, marketing, product development, and so on.
It is still the same: the value extracted is only possible to exist because of many like me, doing labour to create added value which can be sold, without this there's no management class, there's no administrative tasks to perform around the work.
My comment is a retort to this mindset:
> and they're also the people who pay you.
They are only able to pay me because of the work done by many like me, their power can only exist through this conduit so bending over to view the ones in control of capital as "above me" being the "who pay you" is absurd in my worldview. They have their reason to exist but need to respect that without us they are nothing, absolutely nothing. Just like me without people taking care of a business would be in a less comfortable place.
Again, it's symbiotic and I'm just fighting the notion that someone should shut up or think of themselves as lesser because they are being paid by someone, that's only possible through a mutual relationship.
There are about a zillion other ways to avoid starvation. Start a company and run things your own way. Become an independent consultant. Buy a farm. If you don't want to be a corporate employee then you have options. This may require stepping out of your comfort zone and taking risks.
This is exactly why the conflation of "capitalism" with "markets" has been such an effective propaganda coup for the neoliberal rentiers: while there is often non-zero-sum value creation and growth in the short term, it's usually with an eye towards long-term consolidation of social power and rent extraction (converting flows into capitalized assets, representing expected returns and embedded growth obligations).
Monopoly, oligopoly, and market power are a feature, not a bug, and that includes reducing labor to a commoditized asset on the spreadsheet like any other: not only as cheap as possible, but as predictable, and as fungible as possible. (The extent to which the social power of these fiefdoms is not always a means to a "Number Go Up" end, but instead a primate drive for status and power merely enabled by rent-seeking, is left as an exercise for the reader.)
See "Markets Not Capitalism" and "Capital As Power".
It's what our political system produces, and as we all know it's "the best", and thus defended accordingly.
Mark Fisher famously said "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism", well the same seems to be even more true for "democracy", the causal force that Shall Not Be Discussed Critically.
We seem to refuse to admit that companies are a microcosm of the broader cultural/political environment and politics as much as we try to avoid it, plays a big part in how we work.
There are clear conservative/progressive ideologies: Progressives are always wanting to try the shiny new thing, while the conservatives want to stick with what works, and disagreements over the languages, tools and processes we use have similar religious fervor and animosity as you see in the broader culture wars.
An individual can sometimes strike out on their own and succeed, and that's all to the good. But it simply does not scale across every sector of the economy, let alone being a viable strategy for most hand-to-mouth laborers (IIRC, something like 40% of US workers have less than $1000 in savings).
Every shareholder and investor wants a competitive moat: for corporate firms to have enough market power (including lobbying power and regulatory capture) to keep labor costs low (with an intentionally managed reserve pool of the unemployed, via NAIRU, to "discipline labor").
The fact that some individuals can beat the odds, does not change the systems dynamic: "the table is tilted, the game is rigged".
USA has 33.2 million companies, most of those aren't giant conglomerates, so the system do support people to work outside of companies, it isn't as hard to do as some people think.
The main reason people don't go and work for themselves is that companies pay so much that usually it isn't worth it. They would make money on their own but they make more working for a company, that isn't really a bad thing though.
Yes, that is life without a corporation that takes the risks for you. Wasn't that what you wanted?
You can't have your cake and eat it, you either get the risk or you take orders from someone who took on that risk for you and give you a stable income.
