Comment by trentnix
5 days ago
Without knowing any details, I'm guessing what's happened is the inevitable result that befalls organizations as predicted by 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.
And as Douglas Adams stated in the problem with ruling axiom, is that under no circumstance should you allow someone who gets themselves in a position to rule, rule.
> under no circumstance should you allow someone who gets themselves in a position to rule, rule.
Unfortunately the opposite is also true, as anyone who's served on a non-profit board with noncommital members knows.
At least some greek states used to assign leadership in a lottery system designed in such a way partially to avoid the issues with this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
I think a reasonable compromise would be to elect a top 2-3 and then choose randomly between them.
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Lol this is a terrible system because most people do not under any circumstance want to be bothered with wasting their time on this shit.
They get in that position because nobody else wants to do it.
This law needs the addition of a third kind of person: one who is neither devoted to the goals of the organization nor the organization itself, but merely wishes to use the organization as a vehicle to push their own social and political beliefs (such as DEI).
I think this might just be a special case of Type II. By latching onto the latest hot issue (like the Linux Foundation getting into Vaccine Passports... or, less subtly, the Firefox organization rebranding as a "global crew of activists"), you get to collect donations from government and public grants related to the issue. And corporate donations, too, because your good "ESG score" transitively applies to your supporters.
They are devoted to themselves.
Funny given there was a heated discussion yesterday on the FFMPEG Assembly post[0]. I've been seeing similar heated conversations turn up more regularly. Honestly, I think this is a result of this Iron Law. Arguments between developers devoted to the goals of "the organization" vs those dedicated to "the organization", albeit a bit more abstracted.
Funny, we have similar views about Google search[1], and those days were much better
[0] https://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail4...
This is great, I've been looking for a way to express this vague notion I had about organizations. I was thinking along the lines of "nonprofits tend to become generic donation-seeking, rent-seeking entities, keeping their original goals only nominally" but the quote above is a less harsh way to put it.
As a NASA employee, I think this is extremely true. I would bet most of the second group doesn’t or even comprehend that they’re doing it.