We don’t endure corporate America because we like it. Most endure it because they’re afraid of falling into poverty, into shame, into precarity so sharp it cuts. They stay silent, swallow humiliation, metabolize microaggressions into private monologues, and thank the system for a paycheck that barely keeps them afloat.

I endure it differently. I can talk back in trimester reviews. I can name my disgust in one-on-one meetings. I can refuse the script of gratitude and still sleep at night. Not because I’m brave, but because I’m buffered. Layoffs scare me, but if I fall, I don’t fall all the way. My family won’t unravel. My child won’t lose her home or her school. That’s what buffering buys: the freedom to endure with refusal instead of silence.

Corporate America doesn’t thrive on innovation, it thrives on captivity. It feeds on silence, fattens itself on exhaustion, and survives by holding people hostage to fear. What gets labeled as excellence is often just desperation disguised as ambition. Talent has little weight when the real currency is obedience. The system is less of a machine pushing us forward, and more of a parasite that drains us until nothing remains.

And here’s the lie: they call it a meritocracy. They present captivity as a choice. But choice without cushioning isn’t freedom, it’s risk. If I lose my job, I land. If most people lose theirs, they fall hard. That fear of falling is the system’s cage.

I’m not exempt from strain. I live paycheck to paycheck. My husband is an artist; so am I. We’re tens of thousands in debt. But we own a house. Our daughter attends one of the best schools in the country. That’s buffering: precarity layered over privilege, scarcity softened by a net. I can critique the system not because I’m fearless, but because I’m cushioned. And that’s the difference between survival and refusal.

The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed: to extract until collapse, to monetize exhaustion, to punish refusal, to privatize grace. It sells survival on subscription, wraps obedience in HR-speak, cages people in debt, and markets that captivity as stability.

But here’s what terrifies them: if everyone had a buffer, if housing were guaranteed, if food weren’t a weapon, if medical debt didn’t stalk entire generations, corporate America wouldn’t last a generation. People would leave. Quietly. Systematically. They’d grow food, build care pods, make art, raise each other’s children, and stop mistaking obedience for safety. They’d reimagine the center.

That’s why redistribution matters. It isn’t charity. Every dollar moved from hoarded capital into human survival loosens the scaffolding of this cage. Every refusal to hoard, every shared home, every canceled debt wears down the foundation.

Some of us are buffered. We didn’t earn it, we inherited it through family money, education, skin color, or the fluency that makes us legible to the system. That legibility functions like armor, even when our bank accounts are strained. We can afford detachment, and that makes us responsible for more than honesty. It makes us responsible for refusal.

Sometimes I redistribute my buffer, quietly, directly, without system or ceremony. A portion of what falls into my lap goes back into circulation, into hands that need it more. It’s not performative. I call it karma repair. But redistribution isn’t only a small personal act, it’s a BIG collective strategy. The more of us who move resources out of the cage, the less stable that cage becomes.

I’m over the guilt. This is reparative honesty. Because the real lie isn’t that the system is failing us. The real lie is that we believed it was ever meant to serve us.

So here’s what we must say out loud: if you’re buffered, spend it down. If you’re not, know this, your exhaustion is not weakness. Your captivity is not your fault. And for all of us: stop mistaking survival for freedom. Stop thanking the cage for keeping the cat from eating you.

For those like me, we are not brave, we are buffered. And if we want anything to change, we have to turn that buffer into redistribution, into refusal, into cracks in the system so wide that we rebuild the whole foundation.

Once we stop mistaking their cage for our safety, corporate America doesn’t stand a chance.