Thank you, that was a great read. Did not know about Gresham's Law.
I wish the author would have included some examples in which Gresham's Law is violated. It seems related to "Thiers' Law" (which is described on the Gresham's Law Wikipedia page [0]).
It also seems as if Gresham's Law contains a statement of the dynamics that drive good coins out of circulation that make it a very special kind of race to the bottom. For example, in the excerpt from the Mackenzie King letter, the application to industrial standards seems to reflect a somewhat different dynamic.
Cases in which a better, or often simply more expensive good dominates over less expensive ones, does occur. See generally Veblen goods.
In almost all cases, the good itself is a signalling. mechanism for a yet-more complex construct, almost always related to identity, status, and/or power.
The expensive good serves as a more readily apprehended or perceived marker for the less clearly discernable status. Price may itself be part of the signalling, or costs. might be in the form of complex and arcane acquisition of knowledge: language, accent, slang, religious tradition & rituals, dress, table manners, food, culinary knowledge, wine, sports knowledge, programming languages, technical tools or skills, cultural or musical knowledge, management practices, academic arcana, ideological dogma, etc.
Almost any domain which might be considered fad-driven. or fad-like, very possibly has an element of this signalling associated with it.
Gresham's Law tends to no longer hold when the difference between good and bad is qualitative rather than quantitative, and when there are more than one degree of separation between the two.
Joe's Websearch can be cheaper than Google but is much crappier, parasitic mobile games are profitable but doomed to mayfly longevity, etc.
I'm not sure that's true. The more Florence debases the silver florin while Venice stays honest, the more I'm tempted to melt my old florins into Venetian silver ducats. I only get a better and better deal that way.
I wish the author would have included some examples in which Gresham's Law is violated. It seems related to "Thiers' Law" (which is described on the Gresham's Law Wikipedia page [0]).
It also seems as if Gresham's Law contains a statement of the dynamics that drive good coins out of circulation that make it a very special kind of race to the bottom. For example, in the excerpt from the Mackenzie King letter, the application to industrial standards seems to reflect a somewhat different dynamic.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law#Reverse_of_Gre...