Iron Law

Iron law may refer to:

  • Iron law of population, from Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
  • Iron law of wages, from Ferdinand Lassalle's Subsistence theory of wages (mid 19th century)
  • Iron law of oligarchy, from Michels' Political Parties
  • Iron law of prohibition, from Cohen's How the Narcs Created Crack
  • Iron Law of Bureaucracy, from Jerry Pournelle.

Famous quotes containing the words iron and/or law:

    “Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.”
    —John Ruskin (1819–1900)

    “It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man’s will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterred by such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)