Scientific Definition
Agencies meant to regulate an industry get captured by it.
Plain-English Definition
Agencies meant to regulate an industry get captured by it.
Feynman Explanation
The watchdog moves into the henhouse and starts laying eggs.
Core Principle
Agencies meant to regulate an industry get captured by it.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Agencies meant to regulate an industry get captured by it.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Compliance regimes that protect incumbents from competition.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The watchdog moves into the henhouse and starts laying eggs.
Examples
- Industry lobbyists writing the rules that govern them.
- Compliance regimes that protect incumbents from competition.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Revolving-door restrictions. Independent oversight. Public-interest representation.
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.
- Revolving-door restrictions. Independent oversight. Public-interest representation.
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.
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.
Subsidizing coastal living and freezing flood maps treats catastrophic risk as a public liability.
Federal funds subsidize new lanes while states absorb perpetual maintenance.
Federal policy forces homeowners to rebuild doomed structures while waiting on mitigation buyouts.