Beast of burden

Has it ever crossed your mind how selfish we humans are?I mean,a friend of mine quipped that it is a man eat man society. Forget the so called "abundance mentality" professed by many a motivational writer,I beg to differ! I subscribe to the "man eat man mentality" or more aptly I baptize it "Dog eat dog society"... Isn't it funny how sane men strive to outdo each other,actually take advantage of the weaker among them?
How any right thinking creature will actually work towards completely annihilating the other in order to gain a foothold on some perceived or the far more elusive “real” territory?

To illustrate this rarely noticed phenomenon,consider the following simple, though somewhat ludicrous, scenario from the real world:

A marketing professor asked her students what things they could do to improve how they served clients at their places of work. After a 2-minute pause, with absolutely no attempt from a normally active class
except for one quiet and dull girl at the front who whispered almost inaudibly “smile at clients”,she decided to ask the converse of that question: “What is it that you dislike from persons serving you ?”
Suddenly,several hands shot up like the “arrows of the Persians” in a scene in the movie 300. For a moment,the professor was appalled but it dawned on her,the reality that we are all so afraid of facing,the ugly visage of human selfishness. These students were so quick to point out the mistakes in others while completely blind to their own,talk of the proverbial seeing the speck in your brother's eye and missing the log in your own!

This is the case of most freelance programmers and even interns at many of the software development firms around. Recently,a group of novice and intermediate programmers had undertaken a project with one of the big software companies. As with all such programmers the project is considered a challenge,very exciting each eager to prove their salt. With this mindset,the programmer is absorbed into the technical details of the project without fully considering its economic or rather its financial implications. Two issues quickly come to mind for any commerce student worth that name. First,what are the commitments set by the other party to ensuring the smooth flow of events. Most programmers will at this statement shrug “Isn't it obvious?” Well,in business there is no such thing as obvious,its all about agreements and living up to them! So the programmer is implicitly screwed at this level.. That is the main reason why programmers are an unhappy disgruntled lot with respect to remuneration.
The second issue is mainly occasioned by project management practices,most projects are bound to delay and change at one time or another but software projects are special:

They are special not because they are modern but because they possess certain qualities that are unique to them. They are oft delayed because of the numerous changes that most clients usually request. They also are not as tangible as expected,so the tendency to meet deadlines as stipulated in the project schedule. With this in mind,the projects usually are poorly budgeted and planned and are on a failure path from the very start!

This is the very muddle to which programmers are subjected. They bear the brunt of all these mistakes.
The project manager is quick to save their backs from the consequences,all these at the expense of the programmer,who by the way does most of the work anyway! The project manager with all the fat perks still threatens to squeeze the last drop of juice of the programmer's income! This is the case with the novice programmers working for the big company. Despite the lucrativeness of the industry,the companies still exhibit the law of selfishness and unfortunately,the programmer is the beast of burden!
The hours of work they put in that the project manager has absolutely no idea nor concern for and yet the peanuts they get in return!

Is it the project managers that are the problem or is it just a law of nature,like the many that we know of? The law is also cognizable in other professions where some sort of hierarchy is the norm.

This begs the question,is it a law of nature or just a culture that can be reversed?