Jerry Pournelle

That's one of my other favorite things on the internet. The discussion of it is very high quality, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILvD7zVN2jo Getting into a position of power requiring submission to the power hierarchy that grants power is a very keen insight. It means you are subject to all the corruptive forces everyone in those positions of power are also subject to. People will let you into positions of power if you wear their chains. "Then you must become powerful and choose to use that power for good" is almost directly from CGP Grey's own analysis/those two videos. Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy is another way of looking at it: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html The man in the Arena speech tickles these topics and is unfortunately now more relevant than ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic

I think the main point of his principle is roughly correct. Classic companies are started by sociopaths and an initial amount of losers. Then the clueless come in the middle of the pyramid. The clueless section expands as the company grows until the company implodes. I do not agree with his idea of promotion of overachievers into middle management and many other things. Some of his points are self-contradictory. There are many variations on the main principle like Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html (None of this applies applies to startups that are founded by actual programmers.)

If bureaucrats/technocrats "guard" us against "populists", who guards them? Most bureaucrats and technocrats are just like any other human beings: often partisan, selfish and not decisively more able to distinguish a "good" decision from a bad one. At best statecraft is the ultimate field for The Iron Law of Bureaucracy https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Month-old news. He died on 8th September 2017. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/

I'm not sure this is even possible. Many of those extra bureaucrats are there as a result of some Department of Education mandate. Of course there's inefficiency in every large organization, but that doesn't mean you can get rid of it. Every large organization tends to follow Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html), which basically says that over time people who are looking out for the organization's interests (as opposed to the organization's purpose) will always end up in charge.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy [0], Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1], and the Iron Law of Institutions [2] are all closely related. They are essential to understanding how the modern world works and doesn't work and why. The Iron Law of Wages is how Marx and others described the key consequence of the great Thomas Malthus's Principle of Population. [3] Google finds various Iron Laws of the Market, Valuation, Prohibition, Finance, Volunteering, and more, but the only ones I hear in regular conversation are the ones I mentioned above. The one from sociological evaluation in OP is interesting to see also. What Iron Laws are there in your field or conversation? [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy [1] http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html [2] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_institutions [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages

Read up on the '60s Robert Strange McNamara TFX debacle if you want to understand a lot about the F-35/JSF now and likely in the future, minus it also trying to do air superiority (we learned that lesson, although we didn't procure enough F-22s). The Strategy of Technology by Pournelle et. al. is a great source: http://jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/Strat.html

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. I think Jerry Pournelle said it best "They don’t really know what they want, but they really don’t want more of what they’re getting." http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=2487

> My main point is that a company is going to follow the interests of its board and its shareholders. Why do you think these are misaligned? Fundamentally the company's success depends on the product, right? Sure, the shareholders are what needs to be appeased but they set their price on the excitement of what's to come. We can abuse this by creating artificial hype but do you not think that growth is better sustained with hype over worthwhile new products? The investors are fickle and do not have the interest of the company in mind. They only have that interest so long as they hold their shares and they couldn't care less when they sell. But a business should not think in the moment, but the trend over time. Those investors will come and go and we want them to. You don't do that by appeasing the small subset of investors that invest now, especially those who are looking to get in and out as fast as possible. If the investors are the "real customer" then how do you sustain them in the long term? Certainly this is highly aligned with sustaining the people actually buying the products. This seems highly related to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy[0]. Those who voice are the first group, devoted to the goals of the organization. Those who care about the quarter and no further are the second. Loyal to the organization. Worse, loyal only while it suits them. And that's no loyalty at all. [0] https://jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Yes making the actual product is very very secondary to successfully appeasing Congress, produce 'jobs', and follow the litany of rules in place about now the money is used and paperwork after to check boxes. These aren't businesses operating in a competitive market with pressure to produce the best things quickly. Their goal is simply to be the best gov lapdog vs the only 1 or 2 other gov lapdogs. Being extremely late and extremely over budget is standard practice in that world and worst case is usually the project gets cancelled for budget reasons then restarted 5yrs later doing the same thing. This is the environment the gov fostered, they made Boeing etc critical to national security and industry while having a total aversion to risk, and zero forethought into long term investment in legitimate competition. All we get is the same growing monster that becomes the living embodiment of The Iron Law of Bureaucracy https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Absolutely: Steve Ciarcia is a true god! http://circuitcellar.com/how-it-all-began/ On the other hand, Jerry Pournelle was notorious for threatening companies with bad reviews (and carrying out his threats) if they didn't give him free products. So in that sense, he was a pioneer in the field of Entitlement Blogging. https://www.facebook.com/WhiteMooseCafe/posts/2049013308712608 >The sense of entitlement is just too strong in the blogging community and the nastiness, hissy fits and general hate displayed after one of your members was not granted her request for a freebie is giving your whole industry a bad name. I never thought we would be inundated with negative reviews for the simple reason that somebody was required to pay for goods received or services rendered. Not only did he feel entitled to free (as in LOTS OF beer) hardware and software, but also to free ARPANET access, which he bragged about in Chaos Manor. And then he would make incoherent drunken accusations and threats in public to his benevolent benefactors at MIT, who finally got sick of him and flushed him. "How Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPANET": http://www.stormtiger.org/bob/humor/pournell/story.html He was so far ahead of his time, he would be working for the Trump administration if he were younger. They would have loved his enthusiasm for social darwinism. "Think of it as evolution in action." -POURNE https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/trump-is-the-candidate-2/ "So what do I do?…

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1] presents a problem for anyone seeking to rectify the problem of an organization having too much power. In order to fix the problem, you first need power, which means that you need to create the institutional structures needed to secure that power, which means you have just exacerbated the problem. If you then actually follow-through with your original goal, nobody will listen to you, because you have (by definition) removed your power. More pithily, "Organizations whose top priority is not the continued existence of the organization are replaced by organizations whose top priority is." The only way to fix an organization that's outgrown its social purpose is for that organization to fail, outright, and then have its functions subsumed by other entities outside of the organization that can pick up the pieces. Sometimes the failure comes from internal dysfunction, sometimes it comes from external competition, but most of the time it's a mix of both, as internal dysfunction drives away competent insiders who then form the locus of external resistance. [1] https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

RIM is now a textbook case of Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html) in action. Group one, the goal seekers, have been or are being forced out or converted to members of group two, the organization supporters. Those anonymous letters coming from the current and former employees? Just desperate attempts from group one employees to be heard over the crushing silence of the group two management structure. Don't expect RIM's fortunes to turn around any time soon. Only a catastrophic business failure is going to shake up the management structure. With RIM's financials and market position, it could be years before that event comes to pass. Even then, there's no guarantee that RIM would really make a recovery. Most likely RIM will be absorbed by a larger competitor (and the current RIM top brass removed) before anything like real business failure can occur. It's so painful to watch this. RIM has really made some great products and services.

https://jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html Any organization is eventually controlled by people more interested in the organization than its mission. Or something to that effect. (Accidentally attached this to the wrong post, meant for the post above this)

Looks like a textbook example of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.[a] People like the OP, Justin Poehnelt, who build cool things out of self-motivation that others find interesting and want to use, are now at the mercy of those inside Google who care more about the company's internal bureaucracy and their own role and importance within it. To them, the fact that the OP's project was an instant github hit meant nothing. --- [a] https://jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Once a company becomes successful, it attracts the second kind of people in Iron Law of Bureaucracy. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Imagine being so close to understanding something, but your whole identity requires you to not understand it. Venture capital (VC) is fundamentally at odds with good business. VC demands exponential growth from a finite world; something has to give. What usually happens is the company grows to the point that it's impossible to keep the "professional fakers" away. Then the Iron Law[1] kicks in, or enshittification[2], or both. Do you want the benefits of a small company (sustainability, happy employees, happy customers, good products)? Then build a small company. If you want the opposite of those things but also lots of money, try your hand at the VC blackjack tables. Maybe you'll be lucky and this time, it will be different. [1]: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail408.html#Ir… [2]: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

"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. " It's the Iron Law of Bureaucracy https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

related: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html from this recent thread, which is rather relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39491863

Malcolm Gladwell has a podcast in Revisionist History where he likens museums to dragons (hoarding art); I think that's wonderfully apt. Whenever I see institutions, like Harvard, endlessly accumulating wealth above-and-beyond what they "need", I always think of them as "another kind of dragon". I think this interacts with Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy[1]. [1] https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

This is more or less Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Once things go from product focused to profit focused, the ranks start getting filled with administrative roles. Then it's just a matter of time until the balance tips and the iron law of bureaucracy goes into full effect. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html "tech" is just the most recent place this has happened but you can see it repeated through out the last century+ of industrialized corporations.

Yeah the progression feels like a textbook example of the iron law of bureaucracy [1] [1]https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Pournell's Iron Law¹ in action. The administrators will always hoard the power and control promotions etc in an organisation. Studies have shown time and again that small autonomous teams is the most optimal setup for software development. Having a layer of Director, SVP and VPs on top of EMs is just Pournell's Iron Law manifesting itself. 1: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

A link for ref:https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html I miss Byte magazine

Seems like another expression of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1]. It’s funny how everyone keeps seeing the same phenomena. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Set the iron law of bureaucracy. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

Just another instance of https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

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. -- https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

To get a sense of how our nation felt in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the mail column Jerry Pournelle (R.I.P.) had at the time gives a very good perspective: https://jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail170.html#Tuesda… “yes, we are at war. This is our generation's Pearl Harbor.”