You are comparing a government to a company. Peasants don't optionally sign contracts to belong to their nation. For the record I think the peasants should and have every moral (althouth probably not legal)right to revolt.

Revolting from your company is called quitting. So go ahead and revolt if you want.

If believing that both companies and workers should have the freedom to set their own terms for how they want to operate within the bounds of the law is authoritarianism then I will proudly take the label although of course, this is directly inverting the definition of authoritarianism.

> If they want a say in how it is run they can leave

No, they couldn't. Feudal peasants (i.e. serfs) were tied to the land and were NOT free to leave. In general, their lords controlled every aspect of their lives, including who they were permitted to marry.

Being a serf wasn't quite as bad as being a slave (for instance, serfs generally couldn't be sold away from their families, as they were attached to the land), but it was pretty damned bad nonetheless.

At any rate, drawing a comparison between a feudal serf, owned from birth and tied to the land, and a software engineer who could likely have a new job by the end of the day (particularly coming from a high-profile shop like Basecamp) seems rather disingenuous.