Thanks, I'll read through that speech when I have the time. The example you quote doesn't seem to be an instance of the law, though. The Office of the Surgeon General and the Dept. of Agriculture aren't run by the same people, so the fact that they support conflicting policies isn't really evidence that the people running them aren't working for the goals for their respective organizations. The organizations might just have conflicting goals. It's also unclear to me how the two examples on Pournelle's blog (especially the second) are good evidence for the law. Pournelle seems to be interpreting the law to mean something like "Bureaucracies do wasteful and counterproductive things", but that's not what the law says.
More broadly though, Pournelle's law seems to assume that working to further the goals of the organization and working for the organization itself are always incompatible. That's plausible in the example he gave, involving education, but I don't think it's generally true. Often a very effective way to further the goals of a bureaucratic organization is to bolster the political clout and prestige of the organization itself.
The Office of the Surgeon General and the Dept. of Agriculture aren't run by the same people,
Depending on how far up the chain you go. Also FiftyTwo was trying to argue that the people providing health services will include future tax revenue in the set of things they seek to maximize.
Often a very effective way to further the goals of a bureaucratic organization is to bolster the political clout and prestige of the organization itself.
True, assuming you ever actually get around to furthering your goals. Unfortunately, if you optimize your organiza...
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.