4 ms·

What you are describing as performative I would describe as bureaucratic. The Iron Law or Bureaucracy: Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any

What you are describing as performative I would describe as bureaucratic. The Iron Law or 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. (Quoted from Wikipedia)

ryandvm 4mo ago
Yeah, pretty much all systems of governance ultimately evolve until their primary purpose is actually ensuring the survival of the system of governance and anything else it accomplishes is kind of a side effect. It's probably some sort of informational axiom of rules systems in general whether bureaucratic or biological or whatever. Hell, DNA is just rules about what you can build and it's primary purpose is just making sure the rules survive. All the wonderful complexity and diversity of life is a side effect of the little changes necessary to propagate the rules.
- cjbgkagh 4mo ago
  In a way the bureaucracy takes on a life of its own. I think it’s only external pressures that’ll keep the bureaucracy in check, as in if the organization is at risk of dying the interests are aligned so that a more symbiotic relationship is necessary. When organizations are not at risk, either through massive initial success or state intervention (ZIRP) then feedback loop is cut and the bureaucracy will run rampant.
- order-matters 4mo ago
  Assigning single purpose to things is not necessary. "Systems are what they do" is a quote for a reason. I think in addition to rules survival and admin self-concern, people genuinely underestimate how much maintenance and effort go into accomplishing goals in an organized, communicable, trustable way. It is also why AI is not as successful as people thought it was going to be at taking over jobs. If you think the only value add to a business is the business output, you are taking admin work for granted.
  - danudey 4mo ago
    The quote that I heard was "the purpose of a system is what it does", which was to a degree kind of revelatory. The example I heard was McDonald's ice cream machines. What is the purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine? To make ice cream? No, they break down all the time, they're actually pretty bad at making ice cream. The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure support contracts. The company making these machines isn't making bad machines because they're incapable of making good ones, they're making bad machines because bad machines are more profitable in the long term.
    - hyperhello 4mo ago
      It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier. Much more likely that they have control over the machines and use them for impromptu advertising, to keep calorie per dollar lower, and to starve out local ice cream shops as needed.
      - jurgenburgen 4mo ago
        > It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier. I thought McDonalds is the supplier and the franchisee is the one paying. Either way, that money is transfer-billed out of the country.
    - order-matters 4mo ago
      >"the purpose of a system is what it does" thank you, i believe this is closer to, if not exactly, the original wording. >The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure support contracts this is spin, but does have truth. i think people dramatize the quote too much towards conspiracy or alternative intent. I think the best way to interpret the quote is to remove intent and purpose from the system entirely and keep it somewhere above the system. i think it is really meant to undermine any purpose you think a system intrinsically has. it is a collection of tools and processes that have inputs and outputs. Responsibility for how a system is used and what it accomplishes stays with the people using it. When you know what the consequences of using a system are going to be and you use it anyway, then those consequences are what the purpose of your action is, regardless of what it might seem like the system was initially designed to do.
- quotemstr 4mo ago
  And that's why command economies fail. They fail in the same way that firms do, except that because the whole economy is one giant firm, you can't get the you need to remove entrenched bureaucrats until the situation gets so bad that you have a revolution or lose a war.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
    The whole economy is always one giant firm.
  - scottyah 4mo ago
    Ray Dalio has been preaching this for awhile now. Mad respect for him spending an non-insignificant amount of time and money to educate the masses (and all the pushback that comes from it).
    - whattheheckheck 4mo ago
      What does he say
    - Npovview 4mo ago
      I read this a decade back. Lot of good ideas. Explains lot of different fields and how they operate. I recommend people to read it or use AI to get the gist. https://dn710707.ca.archive.org/0/items/BridgewaterRayDalioPrinciples/Bridgewater%20-%20Ray%20Dalio%20-%20Principles.pdf https://dn710707.ca.archive.org/0/items/BridgewaterRayDalioP...
  - psychoslave 4mo ago
    How is failure/success discriminated here and which concrete command economies are assessed?
sethjgore 4mo ago
Makes me think of this timeless and excellent quote by Oscar Wilde: “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
- antonvs 4mo ago
  *Commonly attributed to Oscar Wilde. There doesn't appear to be any definitive source for it. The quote actually reads like a summary of Parkinson's Law, that bureaucracies inherently tend to grow because officials create work for each other another and seek to increase their numbers. But the exact quote doesn't appear in Parkinson's original essay. Quote from that essay: "Factor 1: An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals; and Factor 2: Officials make work for each other." -- https://archive.org/details/parkinsons-law-the-economist https://archive.org/details/parkinsons-law-the-economist
  - glitchc 4mo ago
    I suggest reading the book if you can get your hands on a copy. It's a short and highly entertaining read: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/parkinsons-law_c-northcote-parkinson/299398/item/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/parkinsons-law_c-northcote-par...
- BurningFrog 4mo ago
  Great sounding quotes of unclear origin are usually attributed to Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, or a few others. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Misquotations https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Misquotations
bell-cot 4mo ago
Unfortunately, real-world bureaucratic orgs of any meaningful size or age always include a third type of person - dedicated neither to the org's goals, nor to the org itself. In general, one should speak more circumspectly about that third type.
- pavel_lishin 4mo ago
  > There was a point of equilibrium in any organization’s middle management, a fulcrum of responsibility that remained still while the upper and lower ranks of the bureaucracy moved around it. Tyren knew from experience that a shrewd official could find this pivot-point within the org chart and, once entrenched, enjoy near-complete autonomy with almost no responsibility. From "Son of a Liche", by J. Zachary Pike.
  - Obscurity4340 4mo ago
    Do you think this pivot-middle idea is generalizable to other domains? What is the logic or context that allows them such latitude and autonomy or to even conceptually exist at all? Are they specialized in such a way that they are qualified and expected to focus on higher-quality problems or difficult to hire for or they maybe dont have to deal directly with people in some sense How does one become sufficiently shrewd to capitalize or orient oneself towards that Golidlocks zone?
    - pavel_lishin 4mo ago
      To be clear, the book makes it very clear that Tyren was a bad person, and a bad manager, and that what he is doing is not something people should aspire to. As far as logic and context? Every system has a place for... maybe "parasite" isn't a particularly good term, but there are places where one could get lost in the basement - hopefully with their favorite stapler.
    - jamesfinlayson 4mo ago
      I saw someone like this just get made redundant - they talked a good game and did enough to cement themselves in the organisation, then ended up reporting into a manager who was already over capacity so didn't have the bandwidth to chase up a guy who wasn't causing him any trouble.
saulpw 4mo ago
In cybernetics, the first kind of people are devoted to System 1, and the others are devoted to Systems 2-5. Any functioning organization has all 5 systems. Imagine a school with only teachers and no administration. Who hires the teachers, who collects tuition, who schedules classes? Even if the teachers could do those things, now the teachers have to do the administration, which takes away from teaching--and the teachers quickly find (like any new business owner) that most of their time is spent on 'overhead' and very little on teaching itself. The Iron Law is generally viewed as undesirable, because the 'doers' don't want the 'managers' to control the organization--this is how everything becomes enshittified. At best you have benevolent managers who are extremely sympathetic to the doers and act accordingly, but this is generally short-lived and depends on the organization hiring those benevolent managers. So the big question is, how can we ensure that the values of the organization (System 5) remain aligned with the values of the doers?
- drfloyd51 4mo ago
  The doers can fire the system 5 people.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 4mo ago
    The doers can't remove the bureaucracy-focused people, because doing so would run counter to Pournelle's Iron Law; it's like crossing the streams. Let's instead replace bureaucrats with AI, since the same pressures that drive bureaucracies toward self-preservation might instead push AI systems toward AGI .
    - drfloyd51 4mo ago
      The law doesn’t define behavior. It describes behaviors. Those behaviors can change by giving the doers more power. If a bureaucrat is trouble, and the doers can cause the bureaucrat to be fired, to doers will have more power.

ryandvm 4mo ago

Yeah, pretty much all systems of governance ultimately evolve until their primary purpose is actually ensuring the survival of the system of governance and anything else it accomplishes is kind of a side effect. It's probably some sort of informational axiom of rules systems in general whether bureaucratic or biological or whatever. Hell, DNA is just rules about what you can build and it's primary purpose is just making sure the rules survive. All the wonderful complexity and diversity of life is a side effect of the little changes necessary to propagate the rules.

cjbgkagh 4mo ago
In a way the bureaucracy takes on a life of its own. I think it’s only external pressures that’ll keep the bureaucracy in check, as in if the organization is at risk of dying the interests are aligned so that a more symbiotic relationship is necessary. When organizations are not at risk, either through massive initial success or state intervention (ZIRP) then feedback loop is cut and the bureaucracy will run rampant.
order-matters 4mo ago
Assigning single purpose to things is not necessary. "Systems are what they do" is a quote for a reason. I think in addition to rules survival and admin self-concern, people genuinely underestimate how much maintenance and effort go into accomplishing goals in an organized, communicable, trustable way. It is also why AI is not as successful as people thought it was going to be at taking over jobs. If you think the only value add to a business is the business output, you are taking admin work for granted.
- danudey 4mo ago
  The quote that I heard was "the purpose of a system is what it does", which was to a degree kind of revelatory. The example I heard was McDonald's ice cream machines. What is the purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine? To make ice cream? No, they break down all the time, they're actually pretty bad at making ice cream. The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure support contracts. The company making these machines isn't making bad machines because they're incapable of making good ones, they're making bad machines because bad machines are more profitable in the long term.
  - hyperhello 4mo ago
    It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier. Much more likely that they have control over the machines and use them for impromptu advertising, to keep calorie per dollar lower, and to starve out local ice cream shops as needed.
    - jurgenburgen 4mo ago
      > It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier. I thought McDonalds is the supplier and the franchisee is the one paying. Either way, that money is transfer-billed out of the country.
  - order-matters 4mo ago
    >"the purpose of a system is what it does" thank you, i believe this is closer to, if not exactly, the original wording. >The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure support contracts this is spin, but does have truth. i think people dramatize the quote too much towards conspiracy or alternative intent. I think the best way to interpret the quote is to remove intent and purpose from the system entirely and keep it somewhere above the system. i think it is really meant to undermine any purpose you think a system intrinsically has. it is a collection of tools and processes that have inputs and outputs. Responsibility for how a system is used and what it accomplishes stays with the people using it. When you know what the consequences of using a system are going to be and you use it anyway, then those consequences are what the purpose of your action is, regardless of what it might seem like the system was initially designed to do.
quotemstr 4mo ago
And that's why command economies fail. They fail in the same way that firms do, except that because the whole economy is one giant firm, you can't get the you need to remove entrenched bureaucrats until the situation gets so bad that you have a revolution or lose a war.
- TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
  The whole economy is always one giant firm.
- scottyah 4mo ago
  Ray Dalio has been preaching this for awhile now. Mad respect for him spending an non-insignificant amount of time and money to educate the masses (and all the pushback that comes from it).
  - whattheheckheck 4mo ago
    What does he say
  - Npovview 4mo ago
    I read this a decade back. Lot of good ideas. Explains lot of different fields and how they operate. I recommend people to read it or use AI to get the gist. https://dn710707.ca.archive.org/0/items/BridgewaterRayDalioPrinciples/Bridgewater%20-%20Ray%20Dalio%20-%20Principles.pdf https://dn710707.ca.archive.org/0/items/BridgewaterRayDalioP...
- psychoslave 4mo ago
  How is failure/success discriminated here and which concrete command economies are assessed?

sethjgore 4mo ago

Makes me think of this timeless and excellent quote by Oscar Wilde: “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”

antonvs 4mo ago
*Commonly attributed to Oscar Wilde. There doesn't appear to be any definitive source for it. The quote actually reads like a summary of Parkinson's Law, that bureaucracies inherently tend to grow because officials create work for each other another and seek to increase their numbers. But the exact quote doesn't appear in Parkinson's original essay. Quote from that essay: "Factor 1: An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals; and Factor 2: Officials make work for each other." -- https://archive.org/details/parkinsons-law-the-economist https://archive.org/details/parkinsons-law-the-economist
- glitchc 4mo ago
  I suggest reading the book if you can get your hands on a copy. It's a short and highly entertaining read: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/parkinsons-law_c-northcote-parkinson/299398/item/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/parkinsons-law_c-northcote-par...
BurningFrog 4mo ago
Great sounding quotes of unclear origin are usually attributed to Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, or a few others. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Misquotations https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Misquotations

bell-cot 4mo ago

Unfortunately, real-world bureaucratic orgs of any meaningful size or age always include a third type of person - dedicated neither to the org's goals, nor to the org itself. In general, one should speak more circumspectly about that third type.

pavel_lishin 4mo ago
> There was a point of equilibrium in any organization’s middle management, a fulcrum of responsibility that remained still while the upper and lower ranks of the bureaucracy moved around it. Tyren knew from experience that a shrewd official could find this pivot-point within the org chart and, once entrenched, enjoy near-complete autonomy with almost no responsibility. From "Son of a Liche", by J. Zachary Pike.
- Obscurity4340 4mo ago
  Do you think this pivot-middle idea is generalizable to other domains? What is the logic or context that allows them such latitude and autonomy or to even conceptually exist at all? Are they specialized in such a way that they are qualified and expected to focus on higher-quality problems or difficult to hire for or they maybe dont have to deal directly with people in some sense How does one become sufficiently shrewd to capitalize or orient oneself towards that Golidlocks zone?
  - pavel_lishin 4mo ago
    To be clear, the book makes it very clear that Tyren was a bad person, and a bad manager, and that what he is doing is not something people should aspire to. As far as logic and context? Every system has a place for... maybe "parasite" isn't a particularly good term, but there are places where one could get lost in the basement - hopefully with their favorite stapler.
  - jamesfinlayson 4mo ago
    I saw someone like this just get made redundant - they talked a good game and did enough to cement themselves in the organisation, then ended up reporting into a manager who was already over capacity so didn't have the bandwidth to chase up a guy who wasn't causing him any trouble.

saulpw 4mo ago

In cybernetics, the first kind of people are devoted to System 1, and the others are devoted to Systems 2-5. Any functioning organization has all 5 systems. Imagine a school with only teachers and no administration. Who hires the teachers, who collects tuition, who schedules classes? Even if the teachers could do those things, now the teachers have to do the administration, which takes away from teaching--and the teachers quickly find (like any new business owner) that most of their time is spent on 'overhead' and very little on teaching itself. The Iron Law is generally viewed as undesirable, because the 'doers' don't want the 'managers' to control the organization--this is how everything becomes enshittified. At best you have benevolent managers who are extremely sympathetic to the doers and act accordingly, but this is generally short-lived and depends on the organization hiring those benevolent managers. So the big question is, how can we ensure that the values of the organization (System 5) remain aligned with the values of the doers?

drfloyd51 4mo ago
The doers can fire the system 5 people.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 4mo ago
  The doers can't remove the bureaucracy-focused people, because doing so would run counter to Pournelle's Iron Law; it's like crossing the streams. Let's instead replace bureaucrats with AI, since the same pressures that drive bureaucracies toward self-preservation might instead push AI systems toward AGI .
  - drfloyd51 4mo ago
    The law doesn’t define behavior. It describes behaviors. Those behaviors can change by giving the doers more power. If a bureaucrat is trouble, and the doers can cause the bureaucrat to be fired, to doers will have more power.