The Gauge: The measure chooses the wound, the pressure sets its size.

The gauge chooses the place of the wound; the pressure sets its size." Why do evaluation reforms all fail the same way? Goodhart explains why a measure dies; he does not explain why the next one dies the same. Capture comes first: a measure from above makes the value below undepositable. Then the pressure law, by which inherited bite sets the quantity of damage, which a gauge reform only displaces or converts. Then the remedy: loosen, by the threshold, by abundance, or by time; or damp when you cannot loosen. And the instrument, finally: new failures among safe actors, the loosening signal hardest to imitate. Two empirical cases, one prediction signed in advance, a formal appendix with its breaking conditions. Third of seven essays laying out the grammar of an ontology of passage: how local worlds live, hold, and die.