People spend their whole lives trying to prove to the machine that they aren’t a burden, so that they aren’t next on the chopping block. If they have a problem with that, well “it’s up to you to deal with that.”
So everyone has to perform. Constantly. We all need to prove we are an irreplaceable asset or we’ll end up on the street. “I am my best self. I am useful. I have marketable skills. I am calm and collected. Because I can’t trust anyone to support me but me.” That’s hustle culture in a nutshell, isn’t it? But can people (especially those who aren’t sheltered by wealth) really live like that all the time? Especially in the face of a world full of problems that a positive attitude alone can’t solve? With the constant pressure to wear the skinsuit of a perfect asset even if the world is burning around them? Isn’t it obvious that it would make everyone so tired?
To top it off, when the inevitable happens, and people crumble under the weight of the mask and and all their fear and anxiety explodes out of them, often the world will give them the exact response they feared. Confusion at the sudden collapse followed by “Well I guess they weren’t strong enough to handle it. Not my problem.” or at best a “Let’s get that mask back on.”
At a pizza place where I worked, the menu cost of what each cook on the line could produce per hour was at least $200. Spreading this out across all restaurant staff, it became closer to $80.
Of course it’s easiest to do this when you are directly making a product. In other sectors, for instance at larger retailers, it is much harder to quantify, but if you have access to company overview info then you can easily divide revenue by total workforce and get a productivity metric. The nationwide average is a little over $160k per year ($29T GDP, 175M workers). It’s not unusual for companies to hit $300k a year per worker.
My accounting career has radicalized me far more than any other factor.