A self-organizing company is toxic by its very nature, due to the lack of formal organization.

A hierarchicy will always form, and if you don’t deliberately form it, the result will be, as described, suboptimal.

The problem is that people think that egalitarianism is the natural state of the world and hirarchies have to be artificially introduced. I can see the appeal of this sort of thinking. People belive it, because it is a nice thing to belive.

Agreed. It is marketing with no basis in reality.

Hierarchies form around the skills that are most valuable for the existence of the group. Nobody bites the hand that feeds her. Of course it's toxic if you're the boss or founder, because your goals won't matter. But it isn't for the group that creates it's own goals. This works if there is no boss.

With boss I meant a goalsetter that is outside of the group, that doesn't posess the core competency like the people on the inside. It's clear that there's also an "inside boss", or a most valuable player.