I'm not sure that I understand the point correctly, but if I do... One of the point Dawkins' used his original meme concept to demonstrate is that a meme may n

I'm not sure that I understand the point correctly, but if I do... One of the point Dawkins' used his original meme concept to demonstrate is that a meme may not be beneficial to the person or culture carrying it. The meme just needs to persist and reproduce. He is the selfish gene guy, after all. Also I agree that cultures evolve, but I think the analogy to natural evolution by natural selection can be overstretched. This dynamic exists and can even be dominant, but there are other evolutionary dynamic going on. For myself, my "Big Theory of Bureaucracy" is simply that it accumulates over time. The larger the scale, the less competition and creative destruction happen so bureaucracy can keep growing undisturbed. You could analogise corporate bureaucracy to just about any traditional culture: the US senate, the catholic church or some small island tribe. The US senate does this ritual around debt ceilings. There are written and unwritten rules that make no sense from the outside. It's all based on a rule from 100 years ago, and stopped serving its initial purpose generations ago. Meanwhile, the whole process has gained incidental important roles in coalition consolidation & legislation bundling. Those now depend on debt ceilings. It can be resolved either by vote or a ceremony whereby a small metal object is place inside a large building. The whole thing requires a lot of paperwork. 50 years from now "debt ceiling" might refer exclusively to a quaint ritual where a president gives some guy with a special hat a special coin. At this point, it's impossible to tell bureaucracy from ritual. It's just stuff that needs doing in very specific ways for reasons that are not externally logical. They have history, dependencies, tradition, etc. Maybe bureaucracy is just an inelegant version of that.