Some ideas are so elegantly simple and they explain so much, so efficiently, that their ingenuity creates an “Aha” moment of insight and satisfaction. The Peter Principle is one of these ideas—people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Another is The Law of Concentrated Benefit Over Diffuse Injury, articulated in 1993 by John Grofman and Egan O’Connor.

Because this law explains how things can turn out so badly when most people are so well-intentioned, its authors call it “humanity’s most harmful law”. If we all want peace, fair democracy, honest markets, healthy food, plentiful resources, abundant wildlife and a clean environment, why do things turn out otherwise?