Cognitive Scaffold

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MENTAL MODEL · M5419

Gammon's Law

Gammon's Law
BusinessmediumEconomics
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Updated 2026-08-11

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Gammon's law states that in a bureaucratic system, an increase in expenditure is always accompanied by a decrease in output. The system behaves like a black hole: resources poured in are swallowed by expanding administrative friction, which produces more congestion instead of more service. The practical warning is to distrust the institution that says a problem would be solved if only it had more money or more people, because in this dynamic more money makes it larger and slower. The closely related media variant holds that editors cannot resist what sells, so low-quality content crowds serious reporting out. Qualification: the law describes a pattern of mature bureaucracies, not a physical constant.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Output orientation: reward measured output rather than the size of the budget the unit consumed. - Growth skepticism: distrust the claim that more money and more people will fix the problem. - Quality valve: set an explicit standard for what is published or delivered.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Extra resources entering a bureaucracy are absorbed by the administrative layer itself, which grows and adds friction. Each new unit generates its own coordination cost, so spending rises while delivered service falls. The media variant runs on the same logic at the level of attention: what reliably holds attention, however cheap, displaces what is harder to produce, because the editor cannot resist what sells.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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