Comment by 015UUZn8aEvW
2 years ago
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Every hour that a Boeing employee spends trying to design or build a good airplane is one less hour that he can spend angling for power within the organization. So the people who care the most about the original purpose of the organization will be systematically outcompeted by the people who care the most about obtaining power within the organization. A widespread and profound problem.
When companies are small, the machinations of political types and their inadequate contributions to the core product are too obvious, and they get weeded out.
But when the company grows large and successful (due to the efforts of the people who cared about the original mission), it has a brand and long-term customers. At that point, the political types can burrow in without any immediately obvious effects, since there are enough other people doing the real work and the company has enough momentum to keep moving for some time.
This is broadly why I'm in favour of aggressive antitrust and pro-competition regulation. Companies should be kept medium-sized and competitive. Economies of scale should be sought through cooperation, not conglomeration.
The "one-knob, self-adjusting" way to implement this is a revenue-neutral size tax: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39235533