Compensation Is Law

Compensation is not cleanup. Compensation is legal repair after irreversible action.

When effects escape the system, law must respond.

I. Irreversibility Is the Default

Most actions cannot be undone:

emails are read

money is transferred

goods are shipped

information is learned

Rollback cannot erase reality.

Compensation governs reality after damage.

II. Compensation Is a Judgment, Not a Patch

Compensation decides:

what harm occurred

who bears responsibility

what remedy is acceptable

when balance is restored

This is adjudication.

Ad-hoc fixes are unlawful remedies.

III. Compensation Preserves Truth

A lawful system:

keeps the original action

keeps its effects

keeps the violation

adds compensating action

Erasing effects is falsification.

IV. Compensation Must Be Proportional

Excessive compensation:

punishes beyond fault

distorts incentives

Insufficient compensation:

rewards violation

externalizes harm

Proportionality is legal reasoning.

V. Compensation Requires Authority

Not everyone may compensate.

A lawful compensation requires:

declared authority

defined scope

approved remedies

reason codes

Automatic compensation without authority is vigilante justice.

VI. Compensation Must Be Recorded

A lawful system records:

original action

harm identified

compensation applied

who authorized it

resulting state

Compensation without record rewrites history invisibly.

VII. Compensation Is Temporal

Compensation may be:

immediate

delayed

staged

conditional

Time affects fairness.

Delayed compensation must be justified.

VIII. Replay Requires Compensation Fidelity

Replay must reproduce:

the harm

the compensation

the timing

the final equilibrium

If replay omits compensation, audit fails.

IX. Infrastructure Compensation Is Not Law

Retries, refunds, and retry-with-compensation patterns do not define legality.

They execute policy.

Compensation law must live in:

kernel decisions

registry policy

versioned rules

Not in workflow hacks.

X. Final Conclusion

Compensation is law.

A lawful system:

acknowledges irreversible effects

applies compensation explicitly

enforces proportional remedies

records compensation immutably

replays compensation deterministically

Anything else pretends damage can be undone instead of governed.