[repsilat]

It might be obvious but worth saying anyway. Giving something a name can help you use it as a unit of work, or reason more effectively/accurately/mechanically.

A lot of arguments are built on abstractions like "competition" and "chance", and having a short list of common exceptions to those heuristics on hand is pretty useful. Now when discussing federalism in the U.S., I'll not only wonder whether there are free-rider problems or economies of scale missed out on, I'll also think about whether local decisions are effectively "locked in" forever.