Has anyone ever pondered why pilots seek more money to fly aircraft based on seat count/weight, rather than seeking payrates based on more or less intensive workloads?

In a purely rational economic model, pilots would seek more money to fly airplanes requiring more work/effort/stress, and for aircraft typically associated with "worse" schedules. For example, anecdotally, I think many people would agree that doing 3-4 legs per day on average in a DC-9 or a 737 classic requires more "work" per hour than flying an average of 1 leg per day on an A330.

Maybe our brains place a higher value on "getting our fair share" of the revenue generated from our efforts (i.e. seat count/long-haul flights), versus our individual task load per hour. Maybe as a species we just assume "bigger is better" always--regardless of context. Otherwise, pilot contracts would have evolved in such a fashion that payrates were based on workload/automation status of aircraft types, rather than seat-count.

And maybe at the end of the day everything comes down to mating and passing on genes, and the reptilian, basal parts of our brains assume that flying a widebody on transcons gives us higher rank/status than flying a barbie jet on a 30-minute quick turn in rural Ohio/Michigan/Pennsylvania.

Just thought I would put this out there in case anyone else has any thoughts on the matter.