[ryandvm]

Yeah, pretty much all systems of governance ultimately evolve until their primary purpose is actually ensuring the survival of the system of governance and anything else it accomplishes is kind of a side effect. It's probably some sort of informational axiom of rules systems in general whether bureaucratic or biological or whatever.

Hell, DNA is just rules about what you can build and it's primary purpose is just making sure the rules survive. All the wonderful complexity and diversity of life is a side effect of the little changes necessary to propagate the rules.

[order-matters]

Assigning single purpose to things is not necessary. "Systems are what they do" is a quote for a reason.

I think in addition to rules survival and admin self-concern, people genuinely underestimate how much maintenance and effort go into accomplishing goals in an organized, communicable, trustable way. It is also why AI is not as successful as people thought it was going to be at taking over jobs.

If you think the only value add to a business is the business output, you are taking admin work for granted.

[danudey]

The quote that I heard was "the purpose of a system is what it does", which was to a degree kind of revelatory.

The example I heard was McDonald's ice cream machines. What is the purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine? To make ice cream? No, they break down all the time, they're actually pretty bad at making ice cream.

The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure support contracts. The company making these machines isn't making bad machines because they're incapable of making good ones, they're making bad machines because bad machines are more profitable in the long term.

[hyperhello]

It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier. Much more likely that they have control over the machines and use them for impromptu advertising, to keep calorie per dollar lower, and to starve out local ice cream shops as needed.

[jurgenburgen]

> It doesn’t hold to reason that McDonalds would publicly and continuously put up with that from a supplier.

I thought McDonalds is the supplier and the franchisee is the one paying. Either way, that money is transfer-billed out of the country.

[order-matters]

>"the purpose of a system is what it does"

thank you, i believe this is closer to, if not exactly, the original wording.

>The purpose of a McDonald's ice cream machine is to create billable service calls and ensure support contracts

this is spin, but does have truth. i think people dramatize the quote too much towards conspiracy or alternative intent.

I think the best way to interpret the quote is to remove intent and purpose from the system entirely and keep it somewhere above the system. i think it is really meant to undermine any purpose you think a system intrinsically has. it is a collection of tools and processes that have inputs and outputs.

Responsibility for how a system is used and what it accomplishes stays with the people using it. When you know what the consequences of using a system are going to be and you use it anyway, then those consequences are what the purpose of your action is, regardless of what it might seem like the system was initially designed to do.

[mattjoyce]

Therefore the purpose of a system is to support incentives.

[order-matters]

in a way, for sure - but the incentive exists outside the system so the system would not know what incentives people have for using it. but it usually has rules, input/outputs, delegated authorities for limited scopes, etc. so the system is just the result of those things which may be a greater or lesser scope than any given incentive. Systems are usually used to manage many different incentives as well, so perfect alignment with all of them is often impossible

For example, we might say the US postal systems intended purpose is to deliver mail legal packages. the unabomber had an incentive to use that system to deliver bombs through the mail and it worked. So it was more true to say the purpose of the us postal system (at that time) was to move any items at all from one location to another, at least with respect to the incentive of wanting stuff moved around.

but having a mailman potentially go to every home every day is also something the system does. exciting dogs is something the system does. Just like how blocking the street is something that the garbage collection system does in its current state, which might have an impact on the hours of the day chosen to send hte trucks to collect. There may not be an incentive for everything the system does, and when framed around purpose you might call them side effects, but it's all the same to the system.

when a person is operating as part of the system and something goes wrong, we try to shift blame to them - and it becomes a grey area. this is often why individuals are not held accountable for their actions on behalf of a system when they hurt someone. if you call the police on your neighbor falsely claiming he is violent, the police show up and are too aggressive, and your neighbor get injured - there is mixed responsibility. Using force is within the scope of the police system, you subjected your neighbor to that system knowing that, and the officers have discretion oso depending on the details may or may not have been acting as reasonable representatives of the police system. Taken to an extreme though, SWAT-ing your neighbor is now seen as a serious crime on your part, as we understand teh system that supports a SWAT team showing up to a location to include damages and a low bar for lethal force. we cant say the purpose of the 'SWAT system' is to attend to threats, its not. it is to act on behalf of information claiming a threat exists, because thats what it does.

okay im yapping again, my bad

[cjbgkagh]

In a way the bureaucracy takes on a life of its own. I think it’s only external pressures that’ll keep the bureaucracy in check, as in if the organization is at risk of dying the interests are aligned so that a more symbiotic relationship is necessary. When organizations are not at risk, either through massive initial success or state intervention (ZIRP) then feedback loop is cut and the bureaucracy will run rampant.

[quotemstr]

And that's why command economies fail. They fail in the same way that firms do, except that because the whole economy is one giant firm, you can't get the you need to remove entrenched bureaucrats until the situation gets so bad that you have a revolution or lose a war.

[scottyah]

Ray Dalio has been preaching this for awhile now. Mad respect for him spending an non-insignificant amount of time and money to educate the masses (and all the pushback that comes from it).

[Npovview]

I read this a decade back. Lot of good ideas. Explains lot of different fields and how they operate. I recommend people to read it or use AI to get the gist.

https://dn710707.ca.archive.org/0/items/BridgewaterRayDalioP...

[whattheheckheck]

What does he say

[TheOtherHobbes]

The whole economy is always one giant firm.

[psychoslave]

How is failure/success discriminated here and which concrete command economies are assessed?