We're embedded in lots of systems all of the time.

How adaptive and organic the system is is how much of a "machine" it is.

The more of a machine, the more inhuman.

The machine you work at, the one who pays your salary (and claims a monopoly on your productive output) is a particularly important and dominant force.

You aren't stuck there forever (you aren't a slave), but you can only be at one at a time, so switching is hard.