Tells a lot about company politics. Often times I'm left wondering how come capitalism still survives.

Actually, writing this down made me think that big companies (like the FAANG mostly are) are quite anti-capitalistic. I'm not sure how to call them, because sure as hell they're not socialist or anything of the sorts, but it's reasonably clear that many of the theoretical capitalistic principles that many of us know in one way or another do not apply to these economic entities.

Maybe more medieval: building up fiefdoms, power, resources, etc

Needs a catchy name, Capitalist Feudalism? Feudal Capitalism?

Corporate Feudalism?

Most companies are authoritarian internally. The people at the top make decisions and push those down to their lieutenants who then enforce those rules on the masses.

They are totalitarian. It really is strange, these corporations theoretically battling in a marketplace, but these large orgs with 15 datacenters and IT departments from six mergers are just thrown together into a big hierarchy and the middle management Machiavellis do knife fights over budget.

These companies could make competing internal IT groups and datacenters competing for projects and services in the company.

But companies don't like free markets and competition, every company strives to establish monopoly control. Likewise, middle management doesn't like competition, it clouds their promotion paths.

Oligarchic. (Internal) Leaders who run successful businesses call the shots for everyone.

You might like Ronald Coase's "The Nature of the Firm". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

A business is a socialist command economy embedded in a market economy, which has odd boundary effects at the interfaces.

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I had read about it and about Coase relatively recently but I had skipped the subject, mostly. I think it's a very interesting subject, especially for our field, to be honest I didn't expect for the consolidation at the top to happen so fast (~10-12 years) and at so grand a scale, 9 of the biggest 10 companies by market cap are tech companies (I'm including Tesla here).

Command economies are not necessarily socialist. In particular, businesses really don't fit the definition of socialism.

> Command economies are not necessarily socialist.

One counter-example comes immediately to mind, but mentioning that would cue a whole tedious discussion of "But that is socialism, it's even in the name!" vs "Just because it's in the name doesn't mean it actually is socialism!", so I won't spell it out.

> In particular, businesses really don't fit the definition of socialism.

No, true. As others have mentioned, feudalism ses a better fit.

Capitalism does not imply free (i.e. competitive) market, or the other way around. Capitalism is an economic system in which ownership of the means of production (aka capital, hence the name) is treated the same as any other property, and can thus be accumulated indefinitely. Large corporations monopolizing whole industries is a pinnacle of raw capitalism in that sense, and it's also extremely bad for free market.

Do you mean the fairy tales that rich capitalists have ingrained into the American public consciousness about the unassailable axiomatic good that are "free markets"?

Because actual capitalism is just the means of production being privately owned and operated for profit. It says nothing about how companies operate or what kind of dystopian politics they might have.

Hate to break it to you, but the word you’re looking for is “anti-competitive”. Capitalism is in fact designed to be anti-competitive, so in the absence of laws punishing anti-competitive behavior, capital accrues to those with the largest mass of capital.