I'm pretty sure the idea is that we're supposed to be killing you, so the people in Sweden end up out of a job and only the frantic, stressed American workers s

I'm pretty sure the idea is that we're supposed to be killing you, so the people in Sweden end up out of a job and only the frantic, stressed American workers survive. This, for the purpose of making just a few American capital holders impossibly more wealthy for the virtue of holding the reins on the madly charging American workers. I think you're quite correct that it's insane, but you can also view it through the lens of class war. There are some people in charge who have an unthinkable amount of capital, and they would like it to be this way everywhere. 'Culture' is led by leaders. Company culture comes from the top down. If you had a company leader who earnestly thought hunting down and murdering workers in rival companies was the best way to be a company, AND he was allowed to pursue that unregulated and unrestrained, you'd see a 'culture' straight out of the darkest cyberpunk because others would play copycat and it'd become the new normal. You'd have to deal with it on its own terms. Of course it's insane, and of course it's killing people: in a sense that's a feature. This is the operating system on which we run. There's only workarounds, or changing the OS out from under the 'culture' it produces.