What youre espousing only works on the individual level, not on the societal level. ie when you turn down a crappy job, there will always be someone who will take it.
Don't convolve abuse with wage. There are a lot of programmers who are paid very well but are unhappy with their jobs. Being a corporate wage slave is a fast path to unhappiness.
The problem is that so few people are as introspective as the GP to your post. Most will take the bad job because work > no work in most peoples minds.
This is a problem that cannot be fixed at the leaf nodes, it must be fixed at the root. But the root is currently doing very well for themselves and won't see it as a problem (because there are always more workers)
The solution that factory workers came up with to solve this problem was to organize. But that caused more problems in the long term than it solved (it's economically unfeasible)
You also must keep in mind that a society is simply a group of individuals, things would inherently have to work on an individual level before they turned into a society level movements. Keeping in mind that the first person to quit will pave the way for others to do it without feeling awkward. It's kind of an inertia thing, an object in motion stays in motion, and it takes more energy for an object that is stationary to begin moving. Same overlying principal applies to people and movements in societies.
