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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 4743705" data-attributes="member: 18549">This is a major problem with the corporate mentality, and one that spills out and affects society in general.  The thing is, labour is inherently valuable.  When you hire someone, you're increasing the worth of the company, because an employee is--practically by definition--worth more than he's paid.  The difference between employee productivity and employee compensation is the value of labour.  When a small private business owner hires an employee, they give up some of the responsibility for making a profit to the employee, thereby freeing their own time for either expanding the business or gaining leisure.  A small business owner wants to hire people, because it increases the value of the business.By contrast, a publicly-owned company views labour entirely as an expense.  If an employee can be removed from the payroll, it increases the profit margin by the value of the employee's salary.  Since the only thing that matters is quarterly profit expectations, the question of whether the employee's departure will negatively impact the company is irrelevant.  The attitude is, "well, we can force the other employees to take up the slack, and if they don't like it, we'll fire them too."  This can only go so far before one of two things happen: either someone notices that the company is suffering and makes some changes to policy, or the company drives itself into the ground by turning its own employees against it, as you describe above.People know that their labour is valuable.  And they resent being told that their employment at a company is merely a necessary evil on the way to profit generation.  I think that the policy of viewing people not as valuable contributors to a project, but as instruments for someone else's gain, is the reason why so many people are so dissatisfied with their lives, despite living with historically superlative wealth and advantages.</blockquote>

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