I essentially took that quote to mean that financial incentives can subconsciously change (for the worse) the critical faculties of an individual .

If keeping your job relies upon not acknowledging something (e.g. your boss is corrupt, your job is useless, your team is lazy). You will try to “rationalize” the lack of acknowledgement.

For example, if your job is useless, but I’d be hard for you to find another, you will probably not go to your boss and say “Jim, I’m doing jack s*** here, you should re-think my position or fire me”.

However, most humans don’t like lying (or, in this case, withholding the truth). So they will convince themselves that they are actually telling the truth (or no withholding it). In this case, they will convince themselves their job is actually useful (e.g. by inventing some imaginary problems to solve).