"Middle managers are next..." reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano". Even middle managers and secretaries had to have Ph.D.s and were subject to layoff.
I posted the above to https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-rising-inequality-consider-the-janitors-at-two-top-companies-then-and-now.html?comments#permid=23959553:23960540.
I think an indicator of this problem was renaming personnel departments as human resources. I’ve also seen the thought that evil is treating people as things.
