Companies like Toyota have long understood that a more democratic workplace leads to better outcomes overall. But the reality is, barring a major cultural change or wide-scale labor organization, this kind of management system will never take hold in America.

We're a fundamentally authoritarian society who organizes all our systems like their mini-fiefdoms. I've never understood why a society that prides itself so much on its tradition of democracy would build within itself an economy of autocratic rulers, but I guess these kind of contradictions are as much a part of our culture as anything else.