The Gratitude Trap: A Formal Model of Professional Capture

Why don't captured professionals resist their subordination? Standard labor economics assumes voluntary exchange reveals preferences, yet professionals across sectors report high job satisfaction despite measurable autonomy loss. We develop a dynamic model where status compensation triggers an endogenous gratitude mechanism that prevents recognition of subordination. The model predicts a stable equilibrium at low autonomy and high job satisfaction—what we term "comfortable subordination." We calibrate the model using survey data from 127 professionals across healthcare, law, and architecture in India and the United States (2020-2024), and show that a Gratitude-Subordination Coefficient (GSC) successfully predicts resistance absence. Our framework has implications for labor economics, political economy, and theories of preference formation under institutional constraints.