I’m just here to provide as as little value as possible without being fired, while my employer tries to exploit as much value out of me as they can without me walking out.

The laborers didn’t set these rigged, antagonistic terms, but failing to game them as a laborer just makes you a fool. Almost no employer is earnest with their employees, and that lack of respect should go both ways.

The market capitalists are more than welcome to restructure their orphan crushing economy into one that rewards the labor that makes their capital over do nothing shareholders demanding mooooaaaaar for nothing, simply because they present chips from their last exploitation casino outing, but we all know they’d rather civilization collapses, because the peasants having enough to do more than subsist would make them feel less wealthy by comparison, and would make their fragile egos cry.