A great book published in 1974, 34 years later the age of the factory in the US was pretty much over. Only the meat packing plants and a few others. In the Pacific Rim, however the factories are strong and use slave labor, or at least much harsher lock ins to the "structure" -- today it might be called the "hegemony". But this particular quote by the author Pirsig is wrong even then. The jobs were not meaningless. And there is no "structure". That's magical fantasy. It's always men, us. We humans, men and women.