The Iron Law of Bureaucracy
I keep thinking about this:
Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) July 24, 2023
“In any bureaucracy there will be two kinds of people: those dedicated to the goals of the bureaucracy, and those dedicated to the bureaucracy itself and their places within it. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of…
Looking at public health bureaucracies and how they've performed over the last few years it seems like there's a significant element of that at play. I don't think that it gives enough credence though to the long march through the institutions and ideological capture also at play though. (I suppose that you could argue that the ideologues might be dedicated to their vision of what those goals are though).