okay last post on the mamdani thing. america’s core bargain is simple, it rewards *individuality* for those who maximize: - creation - risk taking - personal sacrifice do those well & you drag the whole distribution curve upward, especially yourself (obviously). even the bottom half benefits because surplus appears by ppl betting on themselves & eating the downside. & the rewards aren’t equal because the inputs aren’t equal. that asymmetry is the incentive gradient. it is *not* a bug. if you flatten it & you get stagnation, not fucking “fairness”. communists & socialists tend to treat this gradient as immoral, as if unequal outcomes imply unequal worth. the system is simply pricing behavior not ranking individuals. it is not immoral in the same way nature is not immoral. every society that forgets this ends up rediscovering it the hard way, usually after running out of other people’s risk capital.