Gresham's Law is a monetary principle that says bad money drives out good money.

And this is a concept that goes back a very long way in history.

We can trace it back to Copernicus.

And in fact, some people call this the Copernicus law instead, because he elucidated the

idea earlier.

But it was also seemingly independently recognized elsewhere.

Al McCreasy of the Mamlluk Empire of the 14th century Egypt is recognized for having come up with it as well.

And if we go back further, much further in history, to the late 5th century BC, we find that

Aristophanes notes the concept in his play The Frogs.

Although it's a relatively short phrase, bad money drives out good money,

it may not be immediately clear what it actually means.

I've heard it applied in a variety of situations into a variety of topics,

but in many cases, it's applied as sort of a broad, understood

truism, that some sort of bad behavior will overwhelm those who choose to play by the rules,

which superficially hits the original meaning mark, but only just barely.

The more exact meaning of Gresham's law comes from the world

of currency, and particularly it applies to commodity money, coins made out of gold and silver

and other precious metals, as opposed to fiat money, like most coins today, which are made out of base metals, and which

serve as theoretical stand-ins for gold or silver or other precious materials that are

purportedly stored elsewhere. When you have commodity money, gold coins, let's say, circulating

throughout a society, there will almost certainly

be someone looking to take advantage of the situation. And when gold coins were common, we saw a lot

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