Core and satellites — what the balance sheet carries, and what orbits it
Framework · Standards
Not every account carries the same evidential weight, so the framework refuses to let them share a line. A convention gets a band; a satellite gets an orbit.
| Account | Placement | Why |
|---|---|---|
| TOPI / GOS-from-KLEMS (operating surplus feeding the income statement) | Core convention — with an uncertainty band. Not a satellite. | A load-bearing estimation the production accounts depend on; hiding it in a satellite would understate what the core identity rests on. Honesty is a band on a core number, not exile to the margin. |
| Water and Carbon | SEEA-style satellite accounts, orbiting the core. | They attach to Substantive Rights’ “free services of nature” branch (What 1.1.2.2.1); their valuation is genuinely contested and Hohfeldian-ambiguous, so they are kept satellite until a workspace values them. |
The Hohfeldian ambiguity that keeps water and carbon satellite
Water rights are an archetypal Hohfeldian-ambiguous construct: a downstream riparian right to undiminished flow is a first-order Right/Duty; a sovereign right to regulate water use is a second-order Power; the freedom from external powers to reassign water is an Immunity. A single water account would almost certainly require multiple entries at different jural positions — so collapsing it into one core line would misclassify it. Carbon retention splits the same way. Until a workspace resolves it, the honest home is a satellite — recognized, quantified, badged, and not summed into the core identity.