[claudiawerner]

> How is this different from other times in history?

The push for human fungibility on the same level as monetary fungibility is a much more recent trend, perhaps only setting aside slave societies.

[8675309t]

Not sure I understand the scope of your statement in terms of time scale and the groups impacted.

If you mean "people having less agency in the workplace than 50 years ago in European/ex-European colonial countries" - sure, I buy it as a recent trend.

If you mean people in power treating other humans like farm animals or worse - this is not new at all and has been going on in various, far more brutal ways for as long as we have recorded history.