Credit card struggle with this issue. Gold cards used to be restricted to people who spent heavily and had a stellar credit history. Nowadays, is platinum better or worse than sapphire? This bewildering mix of colors, minerals, and exclusive words creates a chaos of consumer confusion such that people don’t know how well they are doing – much less how they compare with anyone else.

Contrast that with medals given out at the Olympics or your local track meet. If entrants told you they won silver, you know exactly how well they did. Even someone who knows almost nothing about track can tell right away whether an entrant is a star or just doing okay.

-Contagious, p.49