Main point: > "Americans have powerful fantasies about what work can provide: happiness, esteem, identity, community. The reality is much shoddier. Across many sectors of the economy, labor conditions have only worsened since the 1970s. As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become. This, Malesic says, is a false promise."

It's the same kind of problem communist economies struggled with: why should a worker put out any significant effort at all if the results of their labor are being appropriated by someone else? You can work twice as hard, make a major contribution, but you get no reward - the rewards all go to some form of ruling class, be it the head honchos of the Central Committee (Soviet Union) or some small group of founders and their VC investors (Silicon Valley).

I suppose the alternative - living homeless in poverty without any access to medical or dental care - is the stick used to keep the no-contract wage-rate workers in line in the USA, while in the Soviet Union, the threat of deportation to the Siberian gulag served that purpose.

The solution is fairly obvious, create a system that rewards people fairly for their contributions. This of course means much less profits flowing to founders and investors, right, hence the organized political resistance to anything like that.