“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.” – Jerry Pournelle, Chaos Manor View 408, April 3-9, 2006
Editors’ Quote of the Day:
Co-author of the post apocalyptic book Lucifer’s Hammer with Larry Niven, great book! Great author!
Smart guy that Jerry Pournelle. Had the USA followed his suggestions about how to operate the U.S. Space Program there would have been a moon base 40 years ago and Mars colonization would have began 30 years ago…
My father (designed space suits & life support systems for USAF then later NASA) always maintained that the biggest mistake the US made was to cancel Project Dynasoar. We would have had 40-50 slightly smaller space shuttles in the mid 1960’s, a base on the moon in the 70’s and have landed on Mars in the 80’s with a full scale colony by 1990…while starting to mine the astoroid best in the 2000’s…but Kennedy had to go big, after which we quit.
The ol’man’s name was Dr. Edwin G. Vail, Ph.D. USAF Ret.