Gresham's law is a work that examines this problem in more detail. Some also use an explanation of Gresham's Law as "The more efficient you become, the less effective you get"; i.e. "when you try to go on the cheap, you will stop selling" or "the less you invest in your non-tangible services, the fewer sales you will get." Vice President Spiro Agnew used Gresham's law in describing American news media, stating that "Bad news drives out good news," although his argument was closer to that of a race to the bottom for higher ratings rather than over and undervaluing certain kinds
Gresham's law been noted much earlier, in the 14th century, by Nicole Oresme. In the year that Gresham was born, 1519, it was described by Nicolaus Copernicus in a treatise called "Monetae cudendae ratio": "bad (debased) coinage drives good (un-debased) coinage out of circulation." Copernicus was aware of the practice of exchanging bad coins for good ones and melting down the latter or sending them abroad, and he seems to have drawn up some notes on this subject while he was at Olsztyn in 1519. He made them the basis of a report which he presented to the Prussian Diet held in