The international bestselling Italian author Umberto Eco once addressed this question: why is it that Superman, the most powerful being on the planet, spent his time combating petty criminals?

His answer was that Superman exists not to change the structures of a society based on representative democracy and capitalism. Rather, he serves as a morality tale for the masses who must live their daily lives within those fixed structures. He is an example to be emulated but not a champion for changing the way our world is organized.

Thus, Superman uses his phenomenal superhero powers in what is essentially hand to hand combat in the trenches, rather than trying to stop the war.

In the same vein, it seems to me that a majority of employment law and labor management has been built from and centered around what could be characterized as petty disputes between employee and immediate supervisor. In other words, complaints and conflicts and lawsuits over workplace issues deal most of the time with the friction that occurs between a manager and the people being managed.

But isn’t the real villain bigger than that? Isn’t it the work that people are being asked to do, and the company employment policies, and the income disparity between managers and workers? Isn’t it capitalism itself?

In my career, I have been both a middle manager and a non-management employee. I’ve seen things from both sides and I can say that both sides are constrained by the systems within which they must operate. Sometimes the strain between an employee and their manager is just a manifestation of a manager having to implement poorly considered policies, or an employee acting out due to problems at home.

I can envision a way where the petty interpersonal frictions would be eased with the application of broad systemic reforms. Things like better access to mental health care. Or single payor health care that is independent of one’s employment. Or less systemic racism. Or universal basic income.

If successful, I would expect that the number of little bickering disputes would decline, along with a decline in the number of lost work hours, lost productivity, and people holding bitterness and grudges against each other. Instead of litigants duking it out in a court of law day after day, year after year, time and effort could be put toward making the world a better place for everyone.

For all our feelings of having made progress and living in an age of advanced development, we are still very much a reactionary species, where we fight the next skirmish and never seem to spend too much time wondering why the conflicts never end.