There ought to be a way to cross Gogol's Dead Souls with Pauli–Villars ghosts, but both my po*-russki-fu and my unitarity-fu are too weak.
(unitarity keeps things group-like; semigroups/monoids have an "arrow" in that they make irreversible transitions between J-classes; could it be easier to generalise to the latter than to add ghosts?)
* TIL the waste material from copra harvests gets sold for hydroponic use. Is the appearance of the 水耕龍 an auspicious portent for grow rooms?
EDIT: two important differences education-wise here: (a) kids can signal reasonable intelligence and high conscientiousness through vocational school (although a son of my former landlords started on this route, then swapped to the university track after encouragement by his coworkers), and (b) it's way more difficult to set up a degree mill, because kids have to test into becoming eligible for university and the resulting support.
(Upon reflection: I had a career advantage due to my sheepskin's branding being high intelligence, meh conscientiousness, and low conformity; somehow here I am at the other end of my career still faithfully signalling those same weights on HN)