How to Lose Friends...

[libertango]

Sudden realization:

When torture is used, it's a prime example of Jerry Pournelle's "Iron Law":

"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."

Basically, the torturers are also always, "the second type of person."

Given that Jerry won't even acknowledge that the Iron Law applies to private sector companies (he consistently only applies the Law to public sector bureaucracies he disagrees with, and not more generally), I don't think I'll mention this to him.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I also note his example is a union rep, and not, say, an assistant principal.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Good point. A union rep isn't actually a part of the educational bureaucracy at all, not really. A shop steward for the union may well be, but then, as Hal surely knows, a shop steward can certainly work on both the functional goals of the organization and also for the organization itself. Frankly, I think Jerry's "Iron Law" is rather poorly thought out. But then, as I've noted before, Jerry isn't an especially acute, or astute, observer of human behavior.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and that's one of Jerry's bug-a-boos. Hence, the reason I wrote, "he consistently only applies the Law to public sector bureaucracies he disagrees with..."

A somewhat pithier phrasing of the law comes from here:

"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy is that in any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, so that those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

The obvious example: Someone in accounting or the executive suite trying to make this quarter's numbers be high vs. someone else in the company who comes up with a good product idea that needs investment.

Or, in the case of torture: Officers trying to suck up to civilian authorities higher up in the chain of command vs. the grunt genuinely trying to make our country safer.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Or, while it violates Godwin's Law:

Anytime one can use the Nuremberg Defense to defend one's actions, in any public or private context, one is almost certainly defending the bureaucracy as an institution, and not the goals of the organization itself.

Yeah, it's wordy, but it's that kind of topic.

[metalmensch.livejournal.com]

There is a subtype of type two that likes to torture the torturers, they can sometimes infiltrate and then subvert the organization to act toward the actual goals of the organization. They're still fundamentally a second type person, but their actions are against those hurting the organizational goals instead of the organization.