You have authoritarians. They aren't our middle manager politicians either. The people lost control of government half a century ago to "turn the bull loose."

If one of our oligarchs wants to build where your house is, you're going away.

A corporation can kill 20 people through profit driven intentional negligence and get a shrug of a fine at most. If you damage their expensive property or get in the way of their oil pipelines, you go away.

If you make a better product and refuse to sell for an insulting pittance, they will use their floors of legal teams to bleed you dry, warp patent laws to fit their narrative, and effectively end you.

Our authoritarians control us through the government they've captured by fully legalizing and institutionalizing political bribery. On economic policy, your vote doesn't matter. Vote red, blue, if another color gains traction they'll buy that color too.

You just like our authoritarians better because they have marketing and PR teams, and inflict their rule by proxy of their middle managers in state and federal government. After slavery and jim crow, our owner class figured out it's easier to quietly rule by pulling strings and using the mass media they own to keep us divided over petty social issue crap, most of which is exacerbated by our rigged by design economy. We can't fight them if we're too busy fighting each other, as we're encouraged to do 24/7. "abortion unbanned... Abortion rebanned... Civil right x granted... Civil right x revoked... Stay angry... Don't look up while we exploit your life for private profit!"