Scientific Definition
Concentrated benefits + diffused costs = the few win against the many.
Plain-English Definition
Concentrated benefits + diffused costs = the few win against the many.
Feynman Explanation
The interested minority always beats the disinterested majority.
Core Principle
Concentrated benefits + diffused costs = the few win against the many.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Concentrated benefits + diffused costs = the few win against the many.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Public policy outcomes shaped by who shows up to fight.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The interested minority always beats the disinterested majority.
Examples
- Sugar subsidies, ag tariffs, niche tax breaks.
- Public policy outcomes shaped by who shows up to fight.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Mechanisms that aggregate small interests at scale.
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.
- Mechanisms that aggregate small interests at scale.
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.