It comes from C. Northcote Parkinson's work, where he calls it "The Law of Triviality". The idea is that people clog up decision-making by introducing a swarm of issues that have little relative impact or importance for the project at hand, leading to a massive misallocation of attention. His example is a $10 million construction project for a Nuclear Reactor where as much time is spent debating the materials to be used for a $3000 bike shed as on the actual reactor buildout. The law of triviality says "the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved."

Source: C. Northcote Parkinson, "Parkinson's Law and Other Studies in Administration" (1957)