Pournelle's Law

Jerry Pournelle is not a science fiction writer that I had known until he started appearing periodically on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech. Catching up with old podcasts while on the road, he mentioned in passing his own "Iron Law of Bureaucracy."

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

The example Pournelle gave was teachers who worry first about the kids and administrators who worry about the system. His point being the administrators over time will take control and weed out -- through direct action or simple discouragment attrition -- the teachers.

Jerry himself provides his explanation on his email posting from 2006.