A Capitalist Self-Deception

By Leo Gura - September 13, 2026

A very subtle self-deception of capitalists is that most of them are workaholics, which makes them feel like they earned their excessive wealth through hard work — since they do in fact work long hours. For example, Elon Musk works long hours, works hard. Wall Street investment bankers work crazy long hours. However, that’s still a self-deception because the wealth they get for their work is entirely disproportional to their labor. Yes, Elon Musk works long and hard, but he does not work 1000x longer and harder than one of his engineers. Yet he is paid 1000x more. Just because you work hard does not mean you earned or deserve your wealth. But the capitalist conveniently makes that conflation.

The core self-deception of capitalism is that anything you can get away with through financial manipulation, you deserve. Hollywood celebrities work long hours on films, but they do not deserve nor truly earn a $20,000,000 paycheck. What these deluded capitalists overlook is that the lady cleaning toilets all day long at their hotel also works hard. The construction worker building their luxury mansion also works hard. The school teacher also works hard. But none of them get compensated fairly for their hard work. This is the problem with capitalism: Just because a few jobs pay insanely well does not mean most jobs do. But society requires those non-well-paying jobs.

The core incoherence of capitalists is that they expect to be paid insanely well for their hard work, but they expect everyone else to be paid shit for their hard work. Insane compensation for me but not for thee.

The only reason capitalists are so rich is because they rig insanely disproportionate compensation for themselves at everyone else’s expense. Why is Elon Musk so rich? Because he left Paypal with a $100M check. Did Musk do $100M worth of labor at Paypal? Fuck no. That idea is laughable. The most important secret skill of capitalists is engineering crazy compensation packages for themselves in secret. Very few professions allow you to do that, which is why its unfair.

We could easily pass a law that says that you cannot get paid more than 100x your average employee. But see, the capitalist class will cry that this is unfair. Is it unfair? What’s the truth?

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