Scientific Definition
Bad money drives out good when both are legally equivalent.
Plain-English Definition
Bad money drives out good when both are legally equivalent.
Feynman Explanation
The easy-to-fake replaces the hard-to-fake.
Core Principle
Bad money drives out good when both are legally equivalent.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Bad money drives out good when both are legally equivalent.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Incentives can reward cheap signals over real value.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The easy-to-fake replaces the hard-to-fake.
Examples
- Low-quality content crowds out high-quality content in attention markets.
- Incentives can reward cheap signals over real value.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Design quality signals that are costly to fake.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Design quality signals that are costly to fake.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Exploiting price differences between markets for risk-free profit.
The study of how real humans actually decide — bounded, social, emotional, and inconsistent.
With clear property rights and low transaction costs, parties negotiate to efficient outcomes.
Specialize in what you give up the least to do.
Complements raise each other's value; substitutes lower it.
Fixed costs don't scale with output; variable costs do.
Innovation destroys old industries and creates new ones.
Each additional unit produces less marginal benefit.
A long-run planner self in conflict with a short-run impulsive self.
Owning something raises its valuation — sellers want more to give it up than buyers will pay to acquire.
The mythical fully rational, self-interested, utility-maximizing agent neoclassical models assume.
One party has more or better information than another.