Berglas

The pithy quote is just the opening sentence to the piece. The substance is far more interesting and describes a law about the growth of bureaucracies. I strongly recommend anyone interested to just read the whole thing, because it's only 5 pages. [1]https://www.berglas.org/Articles/parkinsons_law.pdf edit: Thanks. Fixed.

No amount of automation will have any significant effect on the size or efficiency of a bureaucracy. http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantTh…

You might like this https://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantT…

PDF to the original Parkinson's law article in The Economist (1955) https://www.berglas.org/Articles/parkinsons_law.pdf

When I am in the office I constantly hear my inner voice whispering into my ear - b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t. P.S. http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantTh…

Berglas actually wrote about AI as well (http://www.berglas.org/Articles/AIKillGrandchildren/AIKillGrandchildre… and suggested to legally limit chip frequency to 1 MHz to avoid AI proliferation, on the theory that from an evolutionary standpoint, rogue AI is inevitable. More recently (during the current deep learning bubble) he wrote a whole book about AI.

I think this is hilarious, but probably not going to continue to be true. Yes, a lot of software products fail, but automation is increasingly driving capital growth and replacing labor. The p2p gig economy does cut out a lot of bureaucracy, and AI advances... both of which were hard to predict in '08. The article he cited, Parkinson 1955 (originally in the Economist), on the relationship of british naval bureaucracy to work, is even more interesting imo! http://www.berglas.org/Articles/parkinsons_law.pdf . It hypothesizes a growth equation for bureaucracy where the only exogenous factor is the underlying population. I'd be curious whether more rigorous research says anything about bureaucratic growth, as we're stretching further towards an era where minimal % of the population has to do any 'blue collar' labor. Maybe in the field of institutional economics?

You might like this essay: http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantTh…

I always liked SimpleOrm https://berglas.org/simpleorm/index.html It should be used more...

Also because they have computers. When they didn't have them, somehow the tax code was shorter: http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantTh…

This essay argues that as automation becomes better, people create artificial complexity to soak up the gains: http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantTh…

No. I think he's serious. The same author also advocates that the manufacturing and distribution of high-performance processors should be outlawed and regulated as nuclear weapons in order to save humanity from a potential AI singularity [0]. Also, since the computing power we currently have may already be sufficient to run an AGI via distributed computing, destroying existing computers may be necessary. Finally, since he concluded that software projects don't really improve social productivity (in this article), that (high-performance) computers isn't a good idea to humanity in general, therefore, reverting back to the early 90s and asking everyone to use 10 MHz computers is an acceptable solution - you also solve the problem of software bloat simultaneously. In addition, he also suggested that patent trolls might actually be the saviors since they slow down the development of computing and AI. Later he extended these ideas to an entire book [1]. The author's ideas are highly unconventional, but I won't say it's unreasonable or even uncommon in tech - Bill Joy's Why The Future Doesn't Need Us shares similar concerns, the author simply took a much stronger position. [0] https://berglas.org/Articles/AIKillGrandchildren/AIKillGrandchildren.h… [1] http://computersthink.com/

I think that Parkinsons law applies to all form of administration tasks including doctors and hospitals. "Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization." Parkinson noticed that the English ship fleet was decreasing in numbers but the number of administrators administrating the fleet was increasing. This rule can be generalized and said to adhere to all kind of public work. If we do not keep Parkinsons law in check doctors will spend more time at computers fulfilling rules administrators invented instead of doing real critical work helping sick patients. Our tax burden will also increase since the efficiency of the system goes down over time, more tax money needs to be allocated to serve the rules and laws the administrators have invented. Is critical that we limit the number of rules and laws administrators can invent so that we have efficient system that serves there original purpose. Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" Key take away passage from Parkinsons law: "The accompanying table is derived from Admiralty statistics for 1914 and 1928. The criticism voiced at the time centered on the comparison between the sharp fall in numbers of those available for fighting and the sharp rise in those available only for administration, the creation, it was said, of "a magnificent Navy on…

C. Northcote Parkinson wrote about single reports in his 1995 Parkinson's law article published by The Economist[1]. That's the article that articulated in its first sentence the Parkinson's law we all know. In the article he explains that a worker that feels overworked prefers to have subordinates rather than a peer of his own level that would be a rival for promotion. A single subordinate is not ideal because the work would be divided between the two and the subordinate would assume an almost equal status in practice. With two subordinates each is kept in order by fear of the other's promotion and the new manager has the merit of being the only one to comprehend the work of the subordinates. This sets the stage for the two subordinates getting their own assistants. He explain how this new group of people make work for each other. [1] http://www.berglas.org/Articles/parkinsons_law.pdf