When companies are so big that their value is measured in the trillions I think the line between the two is blurry. These companies are managed top down internally after all, so they’re just a smaller “Soviet” situation.
The Soviet situation is top down planning based on what "should" be produced. Actual consumer demand isn't important. The Soviet union would decide some years that industrial equipment was the priority, then years later consumer goods.
Apple is bottoms-up (through customer and market data), with the leadership approving recommendations from the bottom based on what the consumer wants.
The difference appears in failure. 100,000 companies can bankrupt before reaching a single $1 trillion company and that's just markets working as intended. But the government doesn't get that failure mode, at least it's generally not approved of. Apple wasn't, and isn't, the only company trying to be in their position, but they are one of the few trillion dollar companies.
What incidents over the past ~2 years, with constant layoffs in the industry, give you the peace of mind that there are in fact, consequences to mismanagement when running big companies?
