is Lethal Company a critique of neoliberalism, or neofeudalism? The company is an intermediary which treats workers as disposable independent contractors, not employees
Neoliberalism is when you are an atomized, entrepreneurial subject, but you're still living in a mostly traditional liberal society despite having a LinkedIn page and a side hustle in the gig economy.
Neofeudalism is when you are fully transformed into smartphone app platform serf who takes initiative on a daily basis with no boss telling you what to do. But ultimately you must earn enough wealth to pay your feudal lords the yearly tax of grain harvested trash you found in an abandoned post industrial hellzone.
"retrofuturist aesthetic is so cool! Such an epic aesthetic choice, wow this game is awesome!"
Neither honestly it's some secret third thing. If it was Neoliberalism or neofeudalism they wouldn't shove the scrap out the ship when you fail, because the scrap is actually valuable to them.
To be fair, there usually isn't much scrap on a failed run because you were just selling as much as you could minutes before, plus they can probably retrieve it (along with your corpse) after you die.
It’s not actually the scrap that’s valuable to them. Through logs in game you find out it’s actually your collective suffering, which is used to placate the entity and the monsters on nearby moons.