I understand the deal. We live in a society where survival is gated behind selling our labour. We trade hours of our lives for money, then hand a portion of that money back as taxes so the street lights stay on, the roads exist, and—ideally—the vulnerable don’t get left to rot. On paper, it’s not a bad system. It’s elegant, even. Like a grand piano. Or a precision clock. But this one is wildly out of tune.

What, exactly, do CEOs and executives do to justify salaries that could fund small towns? Why is it legal to borrow against untaxed investments, call it “debt,” and use that fiction to pay less income tax than the people cleaning your offices? Is it philanthropy if the money never really leaves your orbit—if it just gets parked in a foundation you named after yourself?

COVID was a windfall if you knew the cheat codes. If you’d had a numbered business long enough, the pandemic came with a $60K, zero-interest government loan—half of which you never had to pay back. Ostensibly, this was to keep real businesses alive. In practice, it became a loyalty reward for people who already knew how to bend the system into origami. Everyone and their uncle suddenly had a “business,” and somehow the people least at risk were the first in line.

You shouldn’t be able to lower your personal taxes because you own a numbered company and hired someone fluent in tax-code sorcery. The moment those tricks become advantageous, the system is already broken. If debt is a weapon for the rich but a trap for the poor, that isn’t fairness—it’s design. And if a CEO is making hundreds of times more than the average worker, something is deeply off.

The head of the country doesn’t make that kind of money. The head of the military doesn’t. Neither do the people running healthcare or education. So why does a guy whose main skill is “optimizing shareholder value” get to print wealth?

Capitalism isn’t the villain people pretend it is. It’s powerful. It’s efficient. It works. But it absolutely cannot be trusted to regulate itself. Capitalism is terrible at self-discipline. That’s why no place worth living has ever gone full laissez-faire and survived it. Regulation isn’t anti-capitalist—it’s a seatbelt. Red lines have to exist. And the way we decide who pays what is long overdue for a rewrite. If you want a ridiculous salary, you should expect ridiculous taxes. Full stop.

Fun fact: when the rich paid more, housing was affordable. New hospitals were being built. Student debt didn’t feel like a life sentence.

Another fun fact: as the wealthy clawed back their obligations through lobbying and political donations, housing turned into a speculative blood sport and hospitals started running lotteries like they were raffling off dignity.

Capitalism is a greedy beast. Naturally, it attracts other greedy beasts to run it. That’s not shocking—it’s predictable. What is shocking is how lazy the rest of us have become. This is supposed to be a cat-and-mouse game, with the electorate as the cat. We have the numbers. We have the power. We could eat the mouse whenever we want.

Instead, we’re distracted, overworked, and desperately pacified. Fed premium-grade bread and circuses.

And while we were busy arguing over scraps and vibes, they convinced us to vote them in based purely on how good they are at capitalism.

And somehow we keep falling for it.

Why are we so gerbs?