

The Iron Law Of Evaluation And Other Metallic Rules - gwern
http://www.gwern.net/docs/1987-rossi

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WildUtah
The Iron Law of Oligarchy [0], Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1], and
the Iron Law of Institutions [2] are all closely related. They are essential
to understanding how the modern world works and doesn't work and why.

The Iron Law of Wages is how Marx and others described the key consequence of
the great Thomas Malthus's Principle of Population. [3]

Google finds various Iron Laws of the Market, Valuation, Prohibition, Finance,
Volunteering, and more, but the only ones I hear in regular conversation are
the ones I mentioned above. The one from sociological evaluation in OP is
interesting to see also.

What Iron Laws are there in your field or conversation?

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy)
[1]
[http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html](http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html)
[2]
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_institutions](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_institutions)
[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages)

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gwern
Submission prompted by
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9011436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9011436)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8981236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8981236)

------
mnemonicsloth
_There are no social science equivalents of the Salk vaccine._

Vaccination is the gold standard for effective intervention? There is now a
large and growing movement underway to withhold vaccines from children. The
parents are no longer afraid of the diseases. The social trumps the
biological.

~~~
TeMPOraL
gwern mentions a particular vaccine specifically. Polio vaccination brought
the common illness to the brink of extinction, and is one of the most
successful cases of planetary-scale cooperation ever.

