A Supreme Court dissent coined the phrase for competing by cutting corners

In 1933, Justice Louis Brandeis warned in a Supreme Court dissent that US states were competing to weaken their own corporate laws to attract businesses, a dynamic he described as a race "not of diligence, but of laxity." That phrase is now credited as the origin of "race to the bottom," the standard term for any competition that rewards cutting standards rather than improving them.

— Louis Brandeis, Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Lee (dissent) — 288 U.S. 517, 1933