This relates to politics, so I'm putting it here...

It's a theory about why dumping more resources into a problem sometimes fails to solve that problem, and it has to do with the attitudes of the people in it. It's also related to learned helplessness, a psychology tenet.

A garden hose may have a trickle of water coming out of it for your use. Maybe you want to spray the windows of your house or wash your car, but other than fill a bucket, the trickle isn't much use. What do you do? You need more pressure, and so you think more water is the answer. You turn up the faucet, and get more flow, which is better but still not good enough. You can't hit the window with it. Your friends who came along to cheer you on scream, "More water! More water!" but unless you have Lake Erie pouring through your hose, you're still not going to hit that window.

So what do you do? You kink the hose long enough for pressure to build up and voilá, you can spray your target. Even with less water, you can get a decent spray. It lies in knowing how to use your resources wisely. To get a more forceful flow, you have to stop the flow temporarily. You have to let what is already there build up to the point where it will perform. You don't turn up the tap all the way and figure the more water, the better.

Beyond a certain point, more water is not the answer. Especially if resources are precious, as water is in arid parts of the country - we have to think carefully about how to use them.

More to come...

EDIT: Aw, scrod, Marty Nemko blew my theory out of the water before it was fully fleshed, with his Bell Curve-like statements...no matter, I'll still work on it so that it is a backup explanation...hmf.