Scientific Definition
Legislators rewarded for delivering local benefits financed by national costs.
Plain-English Definition
Legislators rewarded for delivering local benefits financed by national costs.
Feynman Explanation
Everyone wants the bridge, nobody wants to pay for it.
Core Principle
Legislators rewarded for delivering local benefits financed by national costs.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Legislators rewarded for delivering local benefits financed by national costs.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Allocation distorted from national efficiency to electoral utility.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Everyone wants the bridge, nobody wants to pay for it.
Examples
- Earmarks and district-specific provisions in broad legislation.
- Allocation distorted from national efficiency to electoral utility.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Transparency, ranked-cost disclosure, sunset clauses.
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.
- Transparency, ranked-cost disclosure, sunset clauses.
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.
Legislators rewarded for delivering local benefits financed by national costs.
Subsidizing coastal living and freezing flood maps treats catastrophic risk as a public liability.
Per-bushel subsidies reward overproduction of specific crops regardless of soil, market, or nutritional need.
Federal oversight intended to protect tribal assets creates friction that devalues the land.
Candidates dependent on large donors become structurally responsive to donor priorities over voter priorities.
High-velocity quotas for enumerators turn data collection into fiction-writing.
Forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection.
Generous post-disaster aid lowers the political cost of skipping preventive infrastructure investment.
Aggressive enforcement and complex eligibility turn a safety net into a liability trap.
Politicians optimize for the next election, not the next generation.
Subsidized rural flight frequency forces fuel-burning empty flights to secure annual payouts.
Federal funds subsidize new lanes while states absorb perpetual maintenance.