Iron Law of Bureaucracy
Pournelle has suggested several "laws". His first use of the term "Pournelle's law" appears to be for the expression "one user, one CPU." He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cables connections when diagnosing computer problems. His best-known "law" is "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy":
- In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
He has restated it as:
- ...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
This can be compared to the Iron Law of Oligarchy. His blog, "The View from Chaos Manor", often references apparent examples of the law.
Some of Pournelle's standard themes that recur in the stories are: Welfare States become self-perpetuating, building a technological society requires a strong defense and the rule of law, and "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it."
Read more about this topic: Jerry Pournelle, Politics
Famous quotes containing the words iron, law and/or bureaucracy:
“Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball:
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“There is all the difference in the world between the criminal’s avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient’s taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“If you’re going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy; God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t.”
—Hyman G. Rickover (1900–1986)