Desperate Workers

Desperation can be powerful indeed.  It could make irrationality seem alluring to people, though they are solely at fault of they succumb to irrationality.  A desperate person might have to devote so much energy, focus, and time, even if they are perfectly rational, to trying to address the source of their plight that they have to stay in subpar circumstances.  In the contemporary American workplace, desperation is the norm: why else would anyone need to work for trivial compensation if they were not in economic crisis or trying to stave it off?  Why would or should anyone want work for almost invariably low pay in the face of inflation, irrational company leaders, and the perpetuating cycle of the workweek unless they truly needed to?

Desperate workers will as a whole, since most of them are irrationalists anyway, be easier for abusive employers or managers to control, since they might knowingly submit to asinine policies or blatant oppression because of financial need.  If they do not work, they will not just forfeit the acquisition of more luxuries that make life more bearable on the level of everyday experiences.  They will risk homelessness, starvation, and lack of access to water and medical care.  In America, since homelessness can easily land someone in incarceration, not even this is a safe escape from the utter drudgery and stupidity of the general workplace.  Even so, homelessness brings incredible vulnerability, so it is not just the threat of incarceration that is relevant here.

Low compensation, harmful working conditions, uncaring or outright antagonistic employers, and the like all contribute to the desperation of workers unfortunate enough to be caught by chance in the trap of poverty or at least financial stagnation.  They work to earn money to spend it on necessities, spend it on non-necessities that are still personally important for providing relief (not that there are not plenty of these purchases that workers would be stupid to make, such as those fueling substance addictions), or saving their income to prepare for a more stable life.  Whenever the job that is supposed to deliver them makes their lives miserable, especially when it actually hinders economic progress, it is a major part of their woes.

An employer who realizes this might intentionally lean on this fact if they are irrationalistic egoists.  As long as the status quo still benefits them, they are willing to engage in or overlook all sorts of employee exploitation.  After all, when workers have or feel like they have no other strong options but to endure the nonsense, they could stay far longer with awful jobs or companies, where they are treated like subhuman creatures only existing as a means to the end of someone with power.  Even if some workers were to remain in poverty because of irrational decisions, a collective workforce with a comfortable life and savings--which would not come about in America without the absence of longstanding exploitation norms--would not have as much of a need to take almost any job at all just to survive.