The question "why do people accept corporate scrip?" contains an assumption that acceptance is a decision. For the 3.2 million scrip-compensated workers in GLMZ, it is not a decision. It is a condition. This study examines the structural mechanisms that make scrip acceptance effectively mandatory and the psychological adaptations that workers develop to cope with economic captivity.

The first mechanism is employer consolidation. In GLMZ, the twelve QFIC member corponations and their subsidiaries employ approximately 68% of the formally employed population. Of these, eleven corponations issue scrip. A job seeker looking for scrip-free employment is limited to Sterling-Nakamura (which employs 8% of the formal workforce and is extremely selective), the diminished public sector (approximately 3% of employment), and the informal economy of the Shelf (which offers no employment protections, no benefits, and no stability). For a Tier 2 resident with standard qualifications, the probability of finding scrip-free employment that pays above UBC levels is approximately 11%. The math is simple: accept scrip or don't work. Don't work or live on Φ120 per month. Living on Φ120 means Tier 1 housing, reduced atmospheric processing, food insecurity, and accelerated deterioration of any cyberware you depend on for employment. Accepting scrip means eating. The corponations did not create this system to be cruel. They created it to be efficient. The cruelty is a byproduct.

The second mechanism is the integrated dependency model. When your employer is also your landlord (corponation housing), your doctor (corponation medical facilities), your grocer (corponation commissary), your child's educator (corponation educational programs), and your social network (corponation team structures and residential communities), leaving means losing everything simultaneously. Interview subjects described the experience of contemplating departure from scrip employment in terms that psychologists associate with hostage situations: "Where would I go?" "Who would I know?" "How would I live?" The dependency is not merely financial. It is social, medical, educational, and existential. A worker embedded in a corponation's integrated system for five years has a social network that is 74% corponation-connected, medical records that exist only in corponation databases, children in corponation schools, and a life that is architecturally inseparable from the employer's infrastructure. Leaving the job means leaving the life.

The third mechanism is psychological adaptation. Our interviews revealed a consistent pattern: workers who have accepted scrip compensation for more than two years develop what we term "scrip normalization" — a cognitive restructuring that reframes captive economic conditions as desirable or at least neutral. Subjects described scrip in positive terms: "It's actually convenient," "I don't have to think about where to shop," "Everything I need is right here." These statements are sincere. They are also symptoms. Psychologists recognize this pattern from studies of long-term institutional confinement: inmates who describe prison as "home," cult members who describe isolation as "community," hostages who develop affection for their captors. The human mind adapts to captivity by redefining captivity as choice. This is not a moral failing. It is a survival mechanism. The scrip economy depends on it.

The fourth mechanism is exit penalty. Every scrip-issuing corponation includes a clause in its employment contract specifying that unconverted scrip expires 30 days after separation from employment. A worker with Φ2,000 in accumulated scrip who is terminated, laid off, or who quits has 30 days to convert at the corponation's conversion rate (typically 0.55-0.72 Quanta per scrip unit) or lose everything. This creates a perverse incentive: the longer you work and the more scrip you accumulate, the more you have to lose by leaving. Workers with large scrip balances are the most trapped — their accumulated compensation is held hostage by the entity that paid it. HR departments know this. Scrip balance is tracked as a "retention metric" in internal dashboards. A worker with a high scrip balance is a worker who cannot afford to leave. The scrip is not just currency. It is a leash.