I find it amusing that a uber successful and smart person writing some common sense stuff as if it is new. Everything he says is true, but what is missing here is that much of the world's population is not in a position to negotiate. In many places it is simply put up or leave. How much choice does a single parent or a 60 year old person with no special skills have? Those of us in software have it relatively better than the rest, but it is still the same, just on different level.

Over the last 18 years we’ve been working at making Basecamp a calm company

Awesome. But this is one rare exception. Not many companies are going to do this, even if they can.

The only way to fix this is saner laws, unions etc.