Your job is to PLEASE YOUR CUSTOMER. See that person who is paying you/us money? While you're on the clock, bringing a smile to their face is your reason for being. You either commit to that, by whatever means you have at your disposal... or someone else gets the job. Period.
How did that become replaced by obsequiousness?
"money talks"
From my observation this maybe applies to politics or government but there is a lot of deference to authority within corporations. People often seem to feel they have no rights there.
Indeed. And this is especially true in California where the employment agreements are almost always "at will". In Europe it is much harder to fire someone - or, at the very least, they have to come up with a pretext to do it.
So, I suspect that employment law has at least as much to do with the culture of saying no than anything else. The stronger job protections gives the worker space to be loyal to the company mission rather than the boss.
You're absolutely right. but if the only way to get the job is to promise and deliver more than is reasonable given cost and time constraints, you are vastly better off not getting the job.