[metabagel]

Managers are supposed to exercise power on behalf of the company. In this case, it’s unclear whether the manager was exercising power in the best interests of the company or of himself.

In my opinion, might doesn’t make right. Managers aren’t de facto right purely by virtue of being a manager.

[tertius]

Really depends on your definition of right. Do you mean legally? Morally? Logically?

When it comes to who has the ability to steer subordinates, managers are always right. Except if their managers disagree...

[claudeganon]

So just blanket appeals to authoritarianism then. Completely rational.

[tertius]

A company is not a government... Yes, someone who owns a company has the legal right to do whatever they want, as long as it's not criminal, with their property.

They have complete authority... They don't have to have someone else endow it to them or give it to them...

So yes, they are by definition authoritarian. That's one of the cornerstones of being able to own private property.

[claudeganon]

Other people’s labor is not a company’s private property. That was known as slavery and we have mostly abolished it in the developed world.

But my point is that all of your arguments rest on an unquestioned assumption about how ownership translates to authoritarian control of others without explaining how or by what justification that power is arrived at.

The answer of course is that it’s a social construct enforced by states to varying degrees, present and historically, and thus no way inherent to the thing itself. Appeals to status quo are therefore not justifications for the validity of the relationship, as it has changed over time, proving malleable to all kinds of political and social forces (e.g. the abolition of slavery, the formation of unions, worker collectives). Defending an authoritarian relation to property as it relates to other people’s labor thus require an actual and explicit defense, which you have so far not provided.