I'm from the US. People didn't used to be 'work units'. Even the most coked out 1980s corporate raider would not talk the way the average pro-capitalist does today. And the 1980s was considered the era of exploitive greed. It is wild to see the shift where all human dignity/consideration has been removed by businesses/managers as if that's acceptable/the reasonable position. You're comment is very 2025. It would have made you an outcast in the semi-recent past and seen as a sociopath if used outside of very academic economics discussion, not entertainment discussion forums.

People used to be able to sell themselves/their children into slavery and business people were just fine with it. Then we made them feel shame to treat humans that way. Then we made them feel shame for employing little kids. Them we made them feel shame for threatening a person's ability to provide for their family as leverage to dictate. As soon as they could, they backslid on the last one. Certain states are repealing their child work laws.

This is not normal. This is not how the US was the majority of my life.

it might mean that you are obtusely defending a point of view that ultimately, rationalizes any amount of work for any amount of hours assigned to a helpless cog knowledge worker. "We pay you for that" turns into "you are responsible for that" turns into "do it or you are fired" and "its not done you cant leave until it is done and why did you waste time and why are you failing at this task I gave you" etc..

Some countries have labour laws you know. Where I'm from, if I start a new job that bait-and-switched me into working one hour more than 40/week they will get into a lot of trouble.

I'm not saying overtime is not allowed, but if it's expected to be the norm then it very much must be in the contract. If the overtime is not a regular expectation then it must be compensated appropriately, and even then there are upper limits to the amount of overtime.