5 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
daiva's avatar

Jerry Pournelle is your Somebody, the discoverer of Iron Law of Bureaucracy 🙂

🗨 In any bureaucracy, people devoted to the benefit of bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals that bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and eventually are eliminated entirely.

--

Also quite fits, the last of Robert Conquest’s 3 laws of politics ↓↓

🗨 The behaviour of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.

Expand full comment
SimulationCommander's avatar

This is also true of non-bureaucracies, too (think of a church, for example).

Expand full comment
daiva's avatar

Let’s see 😏 Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say:

🗨 bureaucracy = specific form of organization defined by complexity, division of labour, permanence, professional management, hierarchical coordination and control, strict chain of command, and legal authority. It is distinguished from informal and collegial organizations.

Would you argue the church with its byzantine hierarchy isn't a bureaucracy?! 😲

Expand full comment
SimulationCommander's avatar

THE CHURCH maybe, but every single church in America? Not even close.

Expand full comment
Luke Warmwater's avatar

Think PayPal.

Expand full comment