Exergonic: accompanied by the release of energy.

Endergonic: accompanied by or requiring the absorption of energy.

Any system or process either needs energy to be maintained, or works in line with the way energy flows naturally. There is some connection here that I think is valuable in figuring out what types of systems or policies are maintainable.

For example, adding regulation requires an input of energy, and always will incur that cost. A policy with less regulation reduces energy input required, and can even be designed to follow the flow of energy. This is related to Use markets for what they are good at.

I guess this does present the question of how we actually identify exergonic systems considering all systems need an input of energy ( Second law of thermodynamics?). I guess what this really means for my purposes is that these “exergonic” systems use easily available energy that’s already being produced in the absence of the system, so in practice it doesn’t require an additional energy source to sustain itself.