I had trouble understanding what point the author was trying to make.

It feels a bit like the qualms you might feel during your first stint in management, where you basically enforce rules passed down from above. Where the good of 'increasing value' costs some of the well being of those you supervise, and you have to grow a big doublethink muscle to continue to think of yourself as a good person as opposed to a tool of exploitation, because, unfortunately the opportunities for win-win changes are actually few and far between.