slightly orthogonal but it bugs me sometimes that so much blood was spilled for democracy but that every time we organize ourselves for work it's right back to kingdoms

that mostly because in capitalism, the person that financially gains the most is the one that has the most equity/ power. there is no incentive to share that power with anyone even when managers have the Peter's principle.

Workplaces are undemocratic in the way that my home is undemocratic

My boss isn't my Dad and I'm not a child, tho.

Just because a structure or type of organization (eg.: democracy) works well at some scales or in some contexts doesn't necessarily mean it's what works best at all scales and in all contexts.

On a healthy team a good manager will mostly stay out of the way (this could read as "too much time on their hands" if they are actually a bad manager). On the other hand, when there is systemic dysfunction in a team or organization, then what happens is the environment chews up and spits out any level of individual excellence you throw at it, burning them out, and sending them to the exits, leading to the Dead Sea Effect. These are the environments where a manager shows their quality. Debugging org issues where there's talent, everyone is busy, but nothing valuable seems to get done—that's harder than debugging race conditions in a distributed system. Solving those human problems is what pushed me (more than a little reluctantly) into management.