Enough by Design · Chapter Five

The Balance Sheet Cannot See

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Five of Enough by Design: Scarcity, Abundance and the Art of Living Well.

Abstract

The studio in this chapter is a composite, built for teaching from the shape of many small professional firms. It is not a real company, and every figure in it was set by the writer to make the arithmetic clear. It is a landscape architecture practice of twenty-eight people in a mid-sized city. It designs public parks, school grounds and the gardens of a few large private houses. It has been profitable for eleven years. Ask its accountant what the studio owns, and the answer takes under a minute. Twenty-eight workstations and their screens, a large-format printer, a model-making room, a modest vehicle, the fit-out of a leased floor. On the balance sheet, after depreciation, the tangible assets come to a little over $310,000. The studio's revenue last year was $4,200,000.

Read the PDFRead the whole bookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989353

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). The Balance Sheet Cannot See. In Enough by Design. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989353

@incollection{santaanna2026enough5,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {The Balance Sheet Cannot See},
  booktitle = {Enough by Design},
  chapter   = {5},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989353},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/enough-by-design/05-the-balance-sheet-cannot-see/}
}

References

  1. Corrado, C., Hulten, C., & Sichel, D. (2009). Intangible capital and U.S. economic growth. Review of Income and Wealth, 55(3), 661–685. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.2009.00343.x
  2. Haskel, J., & Westlake, S. (2018). Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400888320

Every chapter of Enough by Design

  1. Chapter OneThe Year on the Letterdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989349
  2. Chapter TwoA Letter to the Grandchildrendoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989350
  3. Chapter ThreeWhere Abundance Overreachesdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989351
  4. Chapter FourWhat a Person Is Able to Bedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989352
  5. Chapter FiveThe Balance Sheet Cannot Seedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989353
  6. Chapter SixOpening the Librarydoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989354
  7. Chapter SevenThe Hours Keynes Promiseddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989355
  8. Chapter EightThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989358
  9. Chapter NineHow to Know It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989359
  10. Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989360
  11. Chapter ElevenEnough at Homedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989363
  12. Chapter TwelveThe Art of Life Itselfdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989364
  13. AppendixThe Workbookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989367

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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.