Our Human Resources department recently promulgated policy changes that would "provid[e] us the ability to leverage common business processes, technology components, information, and human capital across the organization to create efficiencies." Apart from being a good example of lousy English, this sentence reveals how highly corporations regard their employees. It seems humans are nothing but capital to be leveraged; we get used alongside information and machines and, I presume, pens and pencils.
And for what, exactly, are we used? Not long ago we worked to create wealth for the owners, the workers, and the community; the owners took the majority of the wealth, of course, but they at least gave a tip o'the hat to the rest of us. Wealth, though, is an antiquated goal, no longer relevant to the workers. Let us instead "create efficiencies!" Who needs money? This new, more crucial goal of efficiency invigorates me; I shall work harder than ever.
Workers used to be called Workers; we did something; we made things. Later we were called Personnel; this term has less to do with work but still recognizes that Workers are persons. Then we became Human Resources, something to be used like, say, coal or natural gas. Now we are Human Capital, nothing more than artifacts of financial accounting.