As always, your posts are like a breath of fresh air to me.

I think one of the single biggest reasons people make the associations and rationalizations you mention (relate capitalism with freedom, clinging to obsolete work, etc.) is that there is a highly informed, competent, and monied effort to maintain such delusions among the populace.

That small group of rulers you mention surely wish to perpetuate the state of affairs that enriches them, or at least their bank balances. With the resources at their disposal they've enormous leverage to manipulate the perceptions and exposure to ideas of the public. We see an overt example of this in the US every four years or so when elections roll around and huge chunks of advertisement space and even content space are bought to peddle perceptions and finagle votes or whether we vote at all. You and I both know this is happening slightly more covertly for the other three quarters of the time, and when it's not election season nobody even has to explicitly put their approval on it. What can seem like craziness on the level of commoners is in large part a matter of calculated influence, a manifestation of intense sanity and effort on the part of the capitalist class.

Before the conception of things like money, states, or agriculture our ancestors worked very little compared to post industrial society. I've heard numbers around 4 hours a day and not even every day in a week from people who study such things. They even had to contend with large predators and the like, mind you. The gratuitous labor that is done is a fun-house mirror reflection of how we've overmastered our environment, a warped and unrecognizable image.

In the light of what labor is actually required for one's life, it becomes clear that so very much of the work done by my conspecifics is not for themselves and the average worker sees only a pittance of the benefit of their own labor.

Even if you're only working part time, you're still really working double overtime for the billionaires and the titans of industry to safeguard their hegemony and fund their yacht parties.