The world has moved forward. There was slavery in many places.

I had a similar discussion in real life. Where we concluded it that Roe vs. Wade being overturned was the biggest step backwards. Most of the other stuff is noise but this one is a biggy that's hard to fix. It sucks for Americans (which I'm not but I was debating an American).

Nobody is saying we can't let workers decide. Most of us are workers. Most of us vote. We are deciding. The US has also made progress on workers' rights at the state level to my understanding. At the end of the day we still have to lean on the democratic process, we need to debate policies and we need to get people to think critically and think things through. This is very hard to do today given the public discourse and tribalism.