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Four Entropy Domains

All entropy obligations fall into four categories. These domains are invariant — what changes across the ε arc is not the domains themselves, but who or what fulfills the obligations they generate.

Four EOH Domains

Personal EOH

The entropy of human bodies. Biological needs: food, water, shelter, warmth, healthcare, sanitation. This is the base layer — every person generates personal EOH simply by being alive.

A newborn is the highest-EOH-density event in the system: maximum personal entropy obligation, zero entropy-reduction capacity, requiring years of intensive labor investment before contributing to the collective effort.

Arc behavior:

  • At ε = 0: This domain consumes nearly all labor; nearly all of it is private and off-ledger.
  • At high ε: Personal EOH is largely on the collective ledger and mostly machine-fulfilled — but not entirely. Care and nutrition keep automation floors, so a human share remains whatever machines can do, and observable ε does not reach 1.

Survival core and entitlement augmentation

Adopted 2026-08-09. Supersedes the treatment of personal EOH as a single ε-invariant quantity scaled down by automation.

The domain does not have one uniform delivery story. It splits by whether the obligation can be discharged by unassisted human labor at all:

  • Survival core — food, water, shelter, warmth, sanitation, and care. Every one of these has an ε = 0 delivery path by construction: humans have fed, sheltered and cared for each other with no apparatus for as long as there have been humans. Automation makes these cheaper; it is not what makes them possible.
  • Entitlement augmentation — healthcare, and anything else with no unassisted route. No quantity of human labor delivers a caesarean or an antibiotic. Q_health / P_health(0) is undefined, not large: the denominator is zero, so the obligation is owed and undeliverable rather than expensive.

The consequence is structural, not presentational: personal EOH cannot be a single ε-invariant constant scaled down by automation, because part of it does not exist as a deliverable obligation until an apparatus does. Entitlement terms enter as a step-in above a delivery threshold, not as a constant multiplied by (1 − ε).

Health and care are the same obligation split by delivery path, not two unrelated needs. Care is the part that human attention discharges directly; health is the part of the same family that requires apparatus to discharge at all. They are separated in the basket at the granularity the delivery question demands, not because the underlying need divides.

What the threshold means. The step-in is expressed in ε rather than in capital stock deliberately. The binding condition for a population to run a health system is not that the capital exists — it is that there is enough labor slack to staff it, which is what ε measures. A collective with the machines and no spare hours does not deliver healthcare. Capital is necessary and not sufficient; ε is the closer proxy for the sufficient condition.

This is a different mechanism from registration. Registration governs what the collective ledger recognizes. This governs what the basket physically contains.

Code: hours_eoh/core/eoh_generation.py → personal_eoh(), personal_statutory_floor(); hours_eoh/reference/personal_basket.py → SURVIVAL_CORE, ENTITLEMENT_AUGMENTATION

Infrastructure EOH

The entropy of built systems. Buildings, roads, bridges, power grids, water systems, communication networks.

Infrastructure exists to reduce personal EOH collectively — piped water eliminates per-person water-fetching labor. Each piece of infrastructure trades its own EOH (maintenance burden) for a larger reduction in aggregate personal EOH. The economic logic of infrastructure investment: build what generates less EOH than it eliminates.

Arc behavior: Infrastructure EOH grows as the capital stock expands. In the stewardship economy, maintaining the existing capital stock becomes the dominant function of the economy.

Code: hours_eoh/core/eoh_generation.py → infrastructure_eoh()

Ecological EOH

The entropy of natural systems civilization depends on. Soil fertility, water cycles, pollination, climate stability, fisheries, forests.

These have historically been treated as free — no EOH accounting at all — which is precisely why they are collapsing. Ecological EOH makes the obligation visible: nature generates entropy that someone must address, and ignoring it does not eliminate the obligation but defers it with compounding consequences.

Arc behavior: Ecological EOH exists independently of automation level. Neglecting it accumulates as deferred obligation with nonlinear threshold failures.

Where it is carried. Since the Phase 4e/4f partition (2026-08-28/29) the recurring ecological cost — the standing obligation of land at reference condition and its response to degradation — is carried by the Ground Use Fee, where it scales with land held. The domain itself carries the ecological stocks: deferred obligation, the thermal obligation and the restoration obligation. With no stock supplied it reads zero, which is an assignment of the cost, not its absence.

GUF connection

When ecological degradation occurs at the parcel level, the Ground Use Fee framework handles the fiscal response via either a restoration pathway (V_s baselines reset to recovery target) or an abandonment pathway (rebuilding surcharge added). See Ground Use Fee Framework and NLSA §9.

Code: hours_eoh/core/eoh_generation.py → ecological_eoh()

Knowledge EOH

The entropy of information systems. Skills atrophy. Institutional memory fades. Training becomes outdated. Software rots. Standards drift.

At high automation, much of the remaining human contribution is knowledge maintenance, transmission, and judgment. This domain is the least obvious, and it grows as the other three are increasingly handled by machines — though it does not overtake personal EOH. It is also the hardest to verify — unlike a repaired bridge or enriched soil, knowledge maintenance lacks straightforward physical indicators.

Verification challenge

Admitting knowledge EOH to the collective ledger requires careful implementation to ensure verification standards are rigorous without being so burdensome that they discourage the labor the system most needs at high automation.

Arc behavior: This domain's share of total EOH grows monotonically with ε, faster than any other. Personal EOH — care above all — nonetheless remains the largest domain even at ε = 0.99.

Code: hours_eoh/core/eoh_generation.py → knowledge_eoh()

Domain Interactions

The four domains are not independent:

  • Infrastructure investment reduces personal EOH (the reason to build)
  • Ecological degradation increases personal EOH (the cost of ignoring it)
  • Knowledge EOH underpins the ability to maintain infrastructure and steward ecosystems
  • Personal EOH reduction is the ultimate justification for all investment in the other three

Total EOH across all domains is computed by total_eoh() in hours_eoh/core/eoh_generation.py.

See also: EOH Accounting — how EOH obligations become TEH through the fulfillment pipeline.