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I don't know if there's a word for it, but this is a common problem with any group, institution, or organization: it is very difficult for them to voluntarily s

I don't know if there's a word for it, but this is a common problem with any group, institution, or organization: it is very difficult for them to voluntarily shut down once they have achieved their purpose, even if the mission ended in total success.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
I don't know if there's a single word, but a closely related concept is Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization."
hutzlibu 8y ago
In this case they did not really achieve their purpose. Their purpose was also to find out who he was and why he ended up like this.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
March of Dimes actually succeeded in its mission to eradicate polio, then was faced with either disbanding or coming up with a new mission. They went with the latter. This is a rare success story. It is much more common for charities to essentially do counterproductive things that help keep the problem alive so they will continue to have a reason for being. This is something I have learned to be incredibly leery of. Programs to "help the homeless" are often programs that help keep people stuck. If you really care, you should be aiming at policies that reduce the incidence of homelessness, preferably via prevention, rather than big feels squee-worthy approaches where you expect some pathetic soul to grovel and be effusively grateful while their life probably remains in the toilet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Dimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Dimes
pdfernhout 8y ago
"Reverse Adaptation" is maybe close -- see Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought (1978)". A (partial) summary of the term reverse adaptation is here by someone else: https://anarcho-primitive.blogspot.com/2012/08/reverse-adaptation.html https://anarcho-primitive.blogspot.com/2012/08/reverse-adapt... "Technology structures our lives in ways that accommodate its own operative requirements. Langdon Winner called this reverse adaptation. Technologies start out serving specific human ends or addressing a highly circumscribed set of problems. But once they come into being, they shape human thought and activity in ways that conform to the structure and organization of the technology itself. The technological solution becomes a way of reframing the original problem, and features of the original problem that do not correspond to the technological solution are ignored or redefined." But that summary doesn't quite capture everything Langdon Winner talked about -- since he does go into how most institutions become self-perpetuating (or try to). To me, it is also an evolutionary issue -- that we tend to only come across institutions with some sort of equivalent of a survival drive and the means to carry out that drive. I rambled further on that theme in this post: https://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html https://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/01... "Evolution can be made to work in positive ways, by selective breeding, the same way we got so many breeds of dogs and cats. How can we intentionally breed "nice" corporations that are symbiotic with the humans that inhabit them? To what extent is this happening already as talented individuals leave various dysfunctional, misguided, or rogue corporations (or act as "whistle blowers")? I don't say here the individual directs the corporation against its short term interest. I say that individuals affect the selective survival rates of corporations with various goals (and thus corporate evolution) by where they choose to work, what they do there, and how they interact with groups that monitor corporations. To that extent, individuals have some limited control over corporations even when they are not shareholders. Someday, thousands of years from now, corporations may finally have been bred to take the long term view and play an "infinite game". " The late Prof. James R. Beniger (lucky to have had him as a professor in college) had an interesting book that explores an example in the area of self-perpetuating professional networks: "Trafficking in Drug Users" https://www.amazon.com/Trafficking-Drug-Users-Professional-Sociological/dp/0521257530 https://www.amazon.com/Trafficking-Drug-Users-Professional-S... "Examines the way in which the complex network of organizations and professions required for the control of social deviance coordinated their activities to solve the "drug problem" of the 1960s. Beniger demonstrates that incentives used to encourage law enforcement officials to control deviance actually fostered a desire to perpetuate drug abuse in return for various rewards."

0xcde4c3db 8y ago

I don't know if there's a single word, but a closely related concept is Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization."

hutzlibu 8y ago

In this case they did not really achieve their purpose. Their purpose was also to find out who he was and why he ended up like this.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

March of Dimes actually succeeded in its mission to eradicate polio, then was faced with either disbanding or coming up with a new mission. They went with the latter. This is a rare success story. It is much more common for charities to essentially do counterproductive things that help keep the problem alive so they will continue to have a reason for being. This is something I have learned to be incredibly leery of. Programs to "help the homeless" are often programs that help keep people stuck. If you really care, you should be aiming at policies that reduce the incidence of homelessness, preferably via prevention, rather than big feels squee-worthy approaches where you expect some pathetic soul to grovel and be effusively grateful while their life probably remains in the toilet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Dimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Dimes

pdfernhout 8y ago

"Reverse Adaptation" is maybe close -- see Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought (1978)". A (partial) summary of the term reverse adaptation is here by someone else: https://anarcho-primitive.blogspot.com/2012/08/reverse-adaptation.html https://anarcho-primitive.blogspot.com/2012/08/reverse-adapt... "Technology structures our lives in ways that accommodate its own operative requirements. Langdon Winner called this reverse adaptation. Technologies start out serving specific human ends or addressing a highly circumscribed set of problems. But once they come into being, they shape human thought and activity in ways that conform to the structure and organization of the technology itself. The technological solution becomes a way of reframing the original problem, and features of the original problem that do not correspond to the technological solution are ignored or redefined." But that summary doesn't quite capture everything Langdon Winner talked about -- since he does go into how most institutions become self-perpetuating (or try to). To me, it is also an evolutionary issue -- that we tend to only come across institutions with some sort of equivalent of a survival drive and the means to carry out that drive. I rambled further on that theme in this post: https://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html https://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/01... "Evolution can be made to work in positive ways, by selective breeding, the same way we got so many breeds of dogs and cats. How can we intentionally breed "nice" corporations that are symbiotic with the humans that inhabit them? To what extent is this happening already as talented individuals leave various dysfunctional, misguided, or rogue corporations (or act as "whistle blowers")? I don't say here the individual directs the corporation against its short term interest. I say that individuals affect the selective survival rates of corporations with various goals (and thus corporate evolution) by where they choose to work, what they do there, and how they interact with groups that monitor corporations. To that extent, individuals have some limited control over corporations even when they are not shareholders. Someday, thousands of years from now, corporations may finally have been bred to take the long term view and play an "infinite game". " The late Prof. James R. Beniger (lucky to have had him as a professor in college) had an interesting book that explores an example in the area of self-perpetuating professional networks: "Trafficking in Drug Users" https://www.amazon.com/Trafficking-Drug-Users-Professional-Sociological/dp/0521257530 https://www.amazon.com/Trafficking-Drug-Users-Professional-S... "Examines the way in which the complex network of organizations and professions required for the control of social deviance coordinated their activities to solve the "drug problem" of the 1960s. Beniger demonstrates that incentives used to encourage law enforcement officials to control deviance actually fostered a desire to perpetuate drug abuse in return for various rewards."