> Being afraid of losing one’s job is quite a step up from being afraid of a rival tribe ransacking your village. Or a predatory animal. Or bacterial infections. Obviously, things could be better. But they could be much, much worse.

If you talk to people, I think you'll find there are an increasing number who don't actually agree with your idea of worse. It's a question of comforts vs agency. Victims of slavery or displacement are not automatically happy just because the water is cleaner than where they started.

Things we cannot control are a risk in any world. If you must die, do you want it to be because of bad luck and natural causes, or because you're increasing someone's profit margins? Do you want to fight and perhaps die in an desperate battle with a deadly but essentially honest viking invader? Or do you want to live in a authoritarian system that's characterized by ignorance, misinformation, and disenfranchisement where any resistance to different kinds of faceless violence makes you the bad guy or the crazy one?