Golden hammer

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. A golden hammer is a logical fallacy that occurs when you propose the same, simple solution (or type of solution) to every problem.

Alternate names

 * Baruch's Observation
 * Maslow's hammer
 * Kaplan's hammer
 * Birmingham screwdriver
 * Law of the hammer
 * Law of the instrument
 * Persimplex responsum
 * "Cookie cutter solution" is the management speak version.

Etymology
The name comes from 1966 statement:

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

An earlier (yet less famous) quote comes from 1964 statement:

I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.

Problem
Essentially, not everything is a nail; no solution can fix every problem. There's always the possibility that we just haven't built a big enough hammer yet, though.

Examples

 * Every panacea
 * Didit fallacy
 * Some flavors of libertarians view free market economics this way.
 * Conversely, many communists treat the prospect of a planned economy with the same overconfidence.
 * Many neoconservatives view war as a "golden hammer".
 * The item first from more often known from  It can inflict serious damage, but some are defects that squeak on contact. Golden Hammers can break some challenges, though only limited times.