I worked at a large American healthcare tech giant with a certain Wonka-esque private owner who famously said, when asked why she didn't support adding 'nap rooms' for employees, "That's what your desks are for."

This is absolutely correct the one thing we own is our time and having us in a contained space means control of the one piece of intrinsic property.

This reminds me of "The Tale of the Slave" from "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" https://fee.org/articles/the-tale-of-the-slave/

Except for actual slaves who are still around and who are worked for no compensation and endlessly abused to no end. I think this statement is highly insulting to people who are real slaves these days. Corporations do mistreat developers for sure, but to claim to be a slave is beyond laughable.

Except you are extremely well compensated and can quit at any time.

Except it's not that way. You can't quit your job except to take another one. They have things like 'real estate market' and 'taxes' to ensure that. You can't quit in the way most people imagine quitting. We need this for the economy to function. Just like the Romans needed slavery for theirs. You are right about the compensation. That part has improved considerably. Still the supposedly appalling thing about slavery wasn't the lack of compensation but the lack of freedom.

Except sometimes just because you are able to quit doesn't mean you can quit. Hopefully that's less prevalent in IT, but does happen (e.g. people on work visas that cannot change their abusive employer w/o having to GTFO the country).

It's simpler and more common than that.

- Most people don't have significant savings. Even in IT.

- Many people have dependents to support.

- Quitting a job and finding a new one is a big hassle.

- Your chances at finding a comparable job to your previous one are strongly correlated with your performance at your past jobs.

Combined, this means almost no one can just quit, without putting themselves into immediate, moderate-to-high threat to the lives of themselves and their families.

You're right! I just went with an example that used to be the most relevant to me personally (the "work visa" part, fortunately not the "abusive employer" part).

Let's throw in one more reason: health insurance being tied to current employer also means people may be forced to stay, at least until they line up their next gig.

Yea but other than that and your management's inability to sell you to other companies, it's literally the exact same thing /s.

Maybe you should take a walk. No one is shackling you to a six figure salary. Get some perspective.