[billswift]

>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 E Pournelle

Any large enough organization tends towards bureaucracy, and the tendency is even stronger on the Web, where direct person-to-person interaction is more limited. And the evolution to "iron law" conditions tends to be faster there also, once the bureaucratic (rule-following and rule-enforcing) mindset is formed. Wikipedia, Google, and Amazon are other examples, they have all been getting worse to use over the last few years. Web-based organizations probably need to remain smaller than similar real-world organizations, if they want to avoid the effect.

[pc86]

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."