Did the Pandemic Normalize Employee-Monitoring Software? (abc.net.au) 92
"Employee monitoring software became the new normal during COVID-19..." writes Australia's public broadcaster ABC, "logging keystrokes and mouse movement, capturing screenshots, tracking location, and even activating webcams and microphones."
And now "It seems workers are stuck with it.... Surveys of employers in white-collar industries show that even returned office workers will be subject to these new tools. What was introduced in the crisis of the pandemic, as a short-term remedy for lockdowns and working from home has quietly become the 'new normal' for many Australian workplaces." (Thousands of employees have apparently even purchased mouse-jiggling software just to fool the surveillance software.)
But is there a larger issue? "The vast majority of people are not paid enough for the productivity that is demanded of them," argues BuzzFeed's former senior culture writer (now publishing a newsletter called "Culture Study.") After looking at technology's escalating demands, Petersen warns that the real problem is that human productivity ultimately has a ceiling.
"We have to collectively reject the engine of endless growth, and the aspiration for infinite productivity, before it breaks us all."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the stories!
And now "It seems workers are stuck with it.... Surveys of employers in white-collar industries show that even returned office workers will be subject to these new tools. What was introduced in the crisis of the pandemic, as a short-term remedy for lockdowns and working from home has quietly become the 'new normal' for many Australian workplaces." (Thousands of employees have apparently even purchased mouse-jiggling software just to fool the surveillance software.)
But is there a larger issue? "The vast majority of people are not paid enough for the productivity that is demanded of them," argues BuzzFeed's former senior culture writer (now publishing a newsletter called "Culture Study.") After looking at technology's escalating demands, Petersen warns that the real problem is that human productivity ultimately has a ceiling.
"We have to collectively reject the engine of endless growth, and the aspiration for infinite productivity, before it breaks us all."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the stories!
Don't stay if they won't pay. (Score:3, Insightful)
The current market is too good for labor.
Don't stay if they won't pay.
Don't stay if they demand too much for what they pay.
I saw this before with home inspectors iny city. They used to be low pay but had a lot of freedom to work casually, go home for lunch, etc. The only metric was inspecting a certain number of houses per week. Then the city put GPS on them and set new standards an banned going home for lunch. The one who inspected my house said he would be taking early retirement at 58 instead of working til 67 but there was a shortage because younger inspectors not close to retirement were quitting instead.
Re: Don't stay if they won't pay. (Score:3)
This is why micromanagement is a very dirty word, and the micromanagers need to realize we are not a bunch of goddamn machines
I see "going postal" is going to be a retro trend, and one people do not want but will have to fear.
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Re: Don't stay if they won't pay. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the problem - if you're not in the office, you can't even flip out on your manager. And your manager doesn't see you as human (having never met you), so there isn't a self-regulatory mechanism to keep him/her/it from asking unreasonable things.
Pretty much this.
I am adamantly against employee monitoring software. I think it is an unacceptable invasion of privacy whether as a remote or in-office worker. There are exceptions for automated security functions -they are sometimes necessary and can be implemented with minimal privacy impact.
That being said, if you are working remotely, the only metric to measure you by is productivity. If you have a problem, it is your problem. If you are doing your best, but someone else is doing better... you look bad by comparison. Without regular personal interaction there is no motivation to see you as anything other than a unit of production. There is no reason to work with you to help you become better when it is so easy to swap you for a more productive unit.
I see this as the biggest problem with the trend to remote work -impersonalization of business relationships.
Re: Don't stay if they won't pay. (Score:4, Informative)
Without regular personal interaction there is no motivation to see you as anything other than a unit of production.
Do videocalls not exist in your part of the world? Or do you believe that the person on the other end isn't human because they are 2D?
(actually don't answer that second one or they'll shove the Metaverse down our throats even harder)
Re: Don't stay if they won't pay. (Score:2)
The only reason most "business relationships" exist is because most people aren't trust fund kids, or they haven't won the lottery yet.
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lol, I don't know what kind of shit show you work in but:
a) I don't need to flip out on my manager because he's competent and decent
and
b) My manager is able to treat people as humans regardless of whether they've met him physically or not.
You must work in a real shit tip if you have to flip out on your manager regularly and your manager is incapable of treating people as humans if they're not physically in front of them.
It also means your business is going to be a dead end business that can't ever expand, b
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(a) You're lucky. Good for you.
(b) See (a).
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We're not machines, but our replacements will be.
Nope (Score:2)
Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
I think most understand the at work thing, and that it is expected that at work communication and the like is monitored. There are even places you have to swipe in and out of the bathroom. We understand that using our personal phone on company network has privacy implications. But the implications of being at work in a location you may fund, your house, a remote desk, is legitimately up for discussion. And it may not be best just to cry and take your toys and leave.
Exactly what is reasonable to supervise remote work is evolving. Some are going to do too much, others too little. There is less friction in the job market right now so if there a job that is a better fit, go for it.
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Find some place that will allow you to use company resources for inappropriate tasks. This has always been an issue. Making personal calls on company landlines. Using your work computer to run your own business. Surfing porn on the company network. This is not a matter of having nothing to hide so why be afraid. This is a matter of there is no expectation of privacy at work.
I think most understand the at work thing, and that it is expected that at work communication and the like is monitored. There are even places you have to swipe in and out of the bathroom. We understand that using our personal phone on company network has privacy implications. But the implications of being at work in a location you may fund, your house, a remote desk, is legitimately up for discussion. And it may not be best just to cry and take your toys and leave.
Exactly what is reasonable to supervise remote work is evolving. Some are going to do too much, others too little. There is less friction in the job market right now so if there a job that is a better fit, go for it.
I've always wondered about the places that make you clock in at the shitter. "Sorry Mr Smith, you've been eating at Taco Bell too much, and it's affecting your productivity.
Now as for monitoring your computer use, one of the simple ways to defeat monitoring of personal network use is to have more than one computer. If you work at home, you definitely should. My work computer is used for nothing but work. Considering the cost of computing devices these days, it's not a big deal to have a work computer and
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I use work computers at work. I like to keep my personal devices at work on my cellular network. I donâ(TM)t like to take work computers home.
There should be a hard line, IMO. But I do need to take my work computer home. It doesn't have anything on it but work stuff. But I definitely have my own for my own stuff. It just makes things easier in the end.
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That place is called Europe.
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It only exposed the sheeple. People who care stood up and voted with their feet. I believe there was never a greater work force shifting employers...?
Also nope, but from a completely different angle.
I do outsourced corporate IT for dozens of customers in a variety of fields. Many, many of them adopted work-from-home for users. Exactly zero of them even asked about monitoring software, let alone started using any.
ABC found a mouse-jiggler maker, a YouTube video, and a monitoring software company on whom to base the conclusion this is epidemic. Two of the three get free advertising out of the story. So, questionable.
Is there more monitoring going
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It's bad managers, who distrust their employees and cant think of any way to measure their productivity other than "length of time at desk"...
For anyone doing work, there will be a much better way to measure their productivity. For the work i'm doing, we are assigned projects for customers which have an expected level of resource usage and a completion deadline so it's pretty simple.
Am i completing enough projects as expected for the project sizes / my contracted working hours?
Are the projects being complet
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No idea. But currently everybody competent can easily chose were they want to work at this time. No need to put up with crap like this.
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No idea. But currently everybody competent can easily chose were they want to work at this time. No need to put up with crap like this.
I do half at home, half at my location. That's how it has to be. So I probably won't have a "I refuse to leave my house to work" person taking my job anytime soon. 8^)
Before this new thang, the work just couldn't be done from home.
I think that things are going to settle into a new paradigm soon. Careers that by their nature, require human intereaction, travel, or any location work will still have people will do that in person. Those who have jobs where they can work at home - non-management, 100 perce
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I do half at home, half at my location. That's how it has to be.
Bullshit. That depends entirely on the work done.
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I do half at home, half at my location. That's how it has to be.
Bullshit. That depends entirely on the work done.
Having a bad day bro? Nothing about what I said is bullshit. It is an exact expression of my present work. It is exactly how my work is and no other possibility exists. If I am to do my present work - half of the work is in person, no choice. Half I can do at any place I can run my laptop. Not the other half To put it in as simple as possible words. Half is in person because it has to be.
Enjoy an adult beverage or herb of your choice. I wasn't disagreeing with anything you wrote, merely expressing ho
Who wishes what (Score:5, Insightful)
"We have to collectively reject the engine of endless growth, and the aspiration for infinite productivity, before it breaks us all."
Most workers are just trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head, and hopefully have a bit left over so life does not 100% suck.
The ones who want all of this "endless(impossible) growth" are the money hoarders that want to live in absolute luxury and they don't care how many backs of other people they need to break to aquire their crap.
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"We have to collectively reject the engine of endless growth, and the aspiration for infinite productivity, before it breaks us all."
Petersen fundamentally misunderstands where productivity growth comes from. It's not from people working harder for longer hours, it's from having better tools.
American farmers are much more productive in terms of food produce per hour of work than 100 years ago. That because we switch from using horse-drawn plows and manure to tractors and petrochemical-based fertilizers. I'm more productive as a programmer than when I started because I moved from a VT-100 and EDT to a pair of huge monitors and VS Code.
Any company who's trying to get more than a tiny incremental productivity boost by using a keystroke logger is wasting their time. It's probably a net loss when you include the cost of the actual monitoring.
Glad I have a real job. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Become a consultant. Plenty of buzzword potential, and the rules are your own. Good money I hear, and the plebes in the trenches will curse your success.
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(1) Nah, I don't work "8-6", I work whenever my presence is needed in person. But I have space outside my rather small apartment whenever I need to work in person, and that's nice.
(2) My commute is on foot or by bike. I also live in a real city (not a morass of sprawl), so I have access to public transit when I need it. I don't own a stinking (and they do stink) car.
(3) I work in an industry where it would actually be illegal to have cameras monitoring the spaces in which I work.
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I know how to drive. I don't WANT to own a fucking foul car. It's inefficient and a crime against GaÃa to push around a two ton steel box to transport a 100-200 lb person.
You shouldn't needs to move around in a steel isolation box with an air filter just to avoid breathing the emissions of other stink-boxes.
I'm not on call permanently. I have very specific working hours which just don't coincide with normal rush hours. LOL.
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I know how to drive. I don't WANT to own a fucking foul car. It's inefficient and a crime against GaÃa to push around a two ton steel box to transport a 100-200 lb person.
You shouldn't needs to move around in a steel isolation box with an air filter just to avoid breathing the emissions of other stink-boxes.
I'm not on call permanently. I have very specific working hours which just don't coincide with normal rush hours. LOL.
Something tells me that your employer finds your not being in the building with the rest of the employees a big plus.
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Something tells me that you should GFY.
Thanks for confirming what I thought.
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Re: Glad I have a real job. (Score:2)
Something tells me you drank a bit too much of the idealistic kool aid. The way your post is worded almost looks like something a cult member would write. :-\
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You're close! Riding trains is basically a religious experience for me. The subways actually relax me.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1... [nytimes.com]
I love transit. I love living in a place where I have transit. If WFH guts public transit in the US, I'd probably move somewhere like the Netherlands that has a culture that values cycling and public transit more than even the Northeastern USA.
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and instead of cameras you have people physically watching you instead, and can be summoned to work at any time of day? That's some fucking Orwell shit right there
It's the contrary. The Orwellian scenario is to have cameras everywhere and be watched at random. It's very clear in the book. It's fine to have a manager to pass by occasionally and chat a bit. It's not fine to be constantly under a camera and not knowing if you are being actively watched or not.
FYI workplaces cameras are prohibited in EU except for a camera pointing at the cash register, and watching the entrances.
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FYI workplaces cameras are prohibited in EU except for a camera pointing at the cash register, and watching the entrances.
It's quite a bit more complicated than that.
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Under GDPR you must demonstrate the need to process personal data (video is data). There is generally no demonstrable need to film office workers, so you can't have videosurveillance in a white-collar office. You can, though, for a specific place of work manipulating precious goods or cash, or if you have a documented history of burglary in the shop/workplace, or if you only film outside of business hours.
Here some relevant material quoted from the European Data Protection Board: "Guidelines 3/2019 on proce
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Businesses in fact have a codified right to monitor employees, as long as it's nebulously "legitimate"
French law is significantly more strict than EU law on the matter, which is a current point of contention. French law does not allow for it at all, while EU statute and jurisprudence does.
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With an office, not stuck behind a stanking screen and fucking camera at home. I'm not worried about COVID. But being on camera at home, being on call more than 8 hours a day, fuck that noise. If I'm employed, the employer can pay for the real estate I'm working from. I like my boundaries.
I suspect it might be an aspect of technical people that I didn't get the gene for, but I kinda like going to work, interacting with people. And I'm not even an extrovert. As noted, half of my present work is at home, the other half is in person. The in person work is a lot of fun.
Seems like many here want to avoid interaction with others when at all possible. That's not really a good thing.
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I'd like to have the option to go to the office, but with flexibility. Come and go when I like.
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I'd like to have the option to go to the office, but with flexibility. Come and go when I like.
That would be nice. So much depends on the nature of the work. Many here are programmers. That's the sort of thing that might lend itself well to a very flexible schedule, location-wise. For most of my career, it was not an option. Many meetings, significant travel, a lot of experiments and tests, even social events, schmoozing and networking. If I wanted to have the career I did, work from home wasn't an option.
Which was fine by me.
Now my situation is doing a lot of RF calculations during the week whi
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So you do your work at a watercooler, or socialise? How do you somehow get away from doing your computer related task at work? Also what's with your poor time management skills? Why were you on call "more than 8 hours a day"? Did your PC not have an off button? WFH existed long before COVID did, it's not the reason people don't want to be stuck in offices. It sounds like you just couldn't make it work.
If I'm employed, the employer can pay for the real estate I'm working from.
I personally prefer my employer pay for my internet bill, give me several hundred EUR in "personal stationa
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They are paying them (Score:2, Flamebait)
Let's admit it if it was your money wouldn't you be pissed if you paid someone who ends up napping and wacking off to porn instead of doing his or her own job you paid them to?
Not everyone is disciplined or doesn't have ADHD and can stay focused. Many abuse the work at home system even if you tell yourself you're fine and have a right to check up. This is why Google wants people back in the office.
I know this post won't be popular but an employer has every right since productivity statistics show is the low
Re:They are paying them (Score:5, Insightful)
Productivity fell in Q1 because a lot of workers were stuck at home with Omicron. 7-10 days of lost work will have an effect. Also, productivity FELL the most since 1948, but it's not lower than in 1948, since it's risen a lot since then.
This being said, instead of spying on your employees' homes, look at whether they're completing the tasks that you're giving them in a timely manner. Results matter less than method.
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Unless whacking off is part of the job, and the results are measured by the drachm.
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So where, i your proposed system, is there any allowance for people to fail to produce results in a timely manner because the time estimates themselves were unrealistic?
The only obvious way for management to know where the discrepancy actually lies is to know what the person was doing the entire time they were working on the task to discover why the estimates were so far off.
Not that I advocate employee monitoring like this, I'm just saying I can see a practical reason for it that has nothing to do wit
Re: They are paying them (Score:2)
The problem is dreamers in management who think that they can have X done by Y when in reality it's physically impossible to have it done before Z. Those people have no real concept of the work required and the amount of time it actually takes to get the work done. Then the dreamers' fee fees get hurt and they want heads to roll because their workers couldn't pull off an impossible feat (like that would fix anything).
Companies need to be physically escorting the dreamers out of the building because
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I don't know where did you get that ridiculous data from
The doctor with the little flashlight and latex gloves will be along shortly to show you.
So, what you're really saying, is that (Score:2)
people may actually start getting paid more fairly for their work?
Wages have been stagnant a fuck of a long time while corporate profits continue setting records.
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Let's admit it if it was your money wouldn't you be pissed if you paid someone who ends up napping and wacking off to porn instead of doing his or her own job you paid them to?
Probably why so many here don't want to go back to work. Napping is one thing, but someone walking into their cubical at work when they are stroking the old meat whistle could be embarrassing!
I know this post won't be popular but an employer has every right since productivity statistics show is the lowest since 1948!
It won't be popular because it is a dose of truth. But seriously, the way to keep your employer from that stash of step sister pR0n is to have it on a different computer. It will keep the keys on the work computer from getting sticky as well.
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productivity statistics show is the lowest since 1948!
No, it was the steepest single quarter drop since 1947. Actual productivity is higher than it was in 2019, let alone 1947.
https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]
Meanwhile, in Developer Productivity Monitoring... (Score:2)
Make sure you've got your GitHub commit numbers, Jira burndown velocity, Microsoft Viva Insights engagement, SonarQube code smells, and on-call incident response time ducks-in-a-row, kids!
Not a problem everywhere (Score:2)
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Also monitoring that isn't strictly required and limited in scope is illegal in many countries, so not that common in general.
Did the pandemic normalize... (Score:1)
Ooh boy.
The short answer to just about anything that starts that way is, "Yes, but only among the already-abnormal; the rest of us played along while it served an obvious purpose but stopped once it no longer did and very studiously stopped short of turning it into our new religion."
No, union busting did (Score:5, Insightful)
Without bargaining power you're just going to have to suck it down because you don't have anything you can negotiate with. You might think you're an irreplaceable employee and maybe you're right you are, but your employer noticed that and they spent the last 20 years breaking down the processes at their place of business so that you were no longer in irreplaceable employee. They called it devops and you weren't paying attention so you didn't even notice it was happening until it was too late.
Unions suck for newcomers (Score:2)
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Basically your comment is carefully crafted to appeal to both the sides while attacking unions.
If you're not a professional paid anti-union troll your parroting their talking points. Either way please stop. You're helping the bosses of the world fuck us all over.
Another one for the âoedo you have any questi (Score:1)
Results based focus vs Time on job debate again!? (Score:3)
Opportunity cost (Score:4, Interesting)
That's one way you can earn disloyalty.
I was quite amused (Score:2)
Came across a reference to some kind of device... forget the name exactly, but it would simulate mouse movement. It was basically just a little vibrating pad that would turn on every so often.
In all seriousness though, I just don't get this unless it's feeding some sick voyeur fantasy of middle managers, maybe hoping to catch the attractive female in their department undressing in front of the web cam thinking it's off. It seems pretty simple to me, at least for most white collar workers. The basic contract
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Came across a reference to some kind of device... forget the name exactly, but it would simulate mouse movement. It was basically just a little vibrating pad that would turn on every so often.
I'm the maker of one of the devices in the story, which goes by "AFKfix." You can find one on eBay or Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/product... [tindie.com] https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/31... [ebay.com.au]
As the article in the summary says, it's a bit of an arms race. The advantage of a purely mechanical solution is that there's no electronic logs. Some of the software or USB based mouse jigglers are based on the Digispark/Micronucleus bootloader. This is fine, it's great open-source solution, but if your IT department is very advers
Sounds like an opportunity (Score:2)
Should be illegal (Score:2)
There will be solutions (Score:2)
How common is this, really? (Score:2)
TFA was blissfully light on numbers, other than a few breezy quotes about "hundreds" of clients. I'd be really interested in hearing just how widespread tools like this are and in what industries they're used. They seem totally counterproductive to me and easy to game.
"What gets measured gets done." If I were a manager who thought my employees could accomplish more, I'd spend my time measuring output, not activity. I want employees who complete a lot of tasks without a lot of mouse clicks.
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Hate to say 'I told you so...' (Score:3)
There is a group of us blue-collar puke who have been dealing with this for years now: namely, truckers. We've been putting up with this remote micromanagement in the form of ELD's (Electronic Logging Devices) and driver/road facing cameras. I can see the need for the ELD's: (too many were cheating on their logbooks, but not exactly for the reasons you'd think (I won't go too much deeper for this is a whole other topic just by itself). But the ELD also darned near regulates when one can go to sleep, when one wakes up and even if one ha enough time to shut down or take lunch. Combine that with driver-facing cameras (companies tell you that they only monitor those during accidents or hard-braking incidents, for example, but that has actually proven to be a blatant lie for some carriers) and what you get is an occupation in which there is an awful amount of potential micromanagement present.
Kind of a shame, really: there was a time, not long ago, in which one of the prime advantages on this job was that you it was virtually impossible to have management constantly looking over your shoulder. These guys just had to trust you to do you job. The Qualcomm units didn't help much, as they allowed dispatchers to become as irritating to drivers as possible (imagine getting message beeps at 3:00 am while you're trying to sleep, for example) but, still, you were pretty much left to do your thing as an adult. Now that we can have management on our backs 24/7 we are seeing some ridiculous rules being enforced, and it's enough to chase some experienced drivers out of an already severely understaffed industry. I guess drivers with at least 12 or more years or experience don't like being treated like incompetents by staffers who can't even spell the word, "truck"...
Why is this a surprise? (Score:1)
Exploiting humans is not acceptable; it's slavery. (Score:2)
"... the real problem is that human productivity ultimately has a ceiling"
I wouldn't say that that is the problem. Such thinking shows the author accepts the notion of workers in a capitalist economic systems being modern slaves. Capitalist expectations of literally limitless riches for a happy few are the problem.
Go right ahead (Score:1)