"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. The Iron Law states that the second group will always gain control, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."
- Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy
It follows that the second group will seek to increase the size of the organization, inevitably at the expense of the organizational goals. This represents a reduction in efficiency - efficacy - at least equal to the rate of increase in staff, always accomplishing less with more.
there is a saying in the US, too many chiefs and not enough Indians, which describes this exact phenomenon succinctly. I am thankful that President Trump is seeking to reduce federal government employment aggressively, with the story the administration just altered the status of another 50K workers who can now be dismissed without union headaches. Senator Warren is up in arms because 50% of the Department of Education has been fired, whereas I would like to see the department removed completely.
to follow your metaphor, it appears that Trump is culling the deadwood and getting rid of it completely, reducing that longer term potential conflagration.
Start with the federal bureaucracy, the slash even deeper the USAID and related funding, so we significantly reduce the number of NGOs, all or most of which are staffed by leeches who could never cut it in the real world.
Prescribed burning, preventative maintenance! As well as the college at all cost mindset finally being challenged. Challenged by the actual job market, not the narrative.
The whole process might need a bit more of explanation.
Elite over-production occurs in a society because the economic situation is deteriorating as food/energy is getting scarcer. Thus people tend to invest in education for their kids (or ask the state to do so) so they can individually keep ahead and hopefully still get a good job.
So the first sign to watch is the rise of number of students and awarded degrees. Especially managerial/non-productive ones that are easier to award without objectively measurable skills.
Then, of course, the state (and to a lesser the degree the private sector) is pressured to provide jobs (and wages) for these new graduates. There are many ways to do that. Inflating administration, increasing the number of organizations producing standards, swell the judicial system by making legal procedures more complex, generalizing DEI... All of them are costly, tend to be parasitic and, anyway, can only respond to the employment situation up to a point.
And this is where it's getting dangerous and can turn violent. Because more and more graduates don't get the job and the incomes they were expecting, they tend to form a counter-elite and challenge an established order they consider as morally unfair. Right when state and private sector economic health is deteriorating even faster.
If nothing is done to defuse the situation, it usually end up with a revolution or a civil war until death rate brings an end to the overproduction...
In the 1980s, the French government announced that its goal was to award a high school diploma to 80% of each age group. Then young people took to the streets en masse to ensure that this diploma would give them free and unconditional access to university.
From then on, academic standards began to decline, but at least students were not registered as unemployed...
Thanks for the clarification. I recently had a conversation with an 87 year old man in Switzerland. I asked him about what some of the major changes are, that he observes in his environment. He said: “When I graduated university I had four job offers without applying anywhere. Both my grandson and son are currently unemployed despite being more qualified than I was in their age.”
Great point. If you don't mind watching older TV series, the 80s British TV series Yes, Minister (not the newer version) focuses, in a very humorous way, on how bureaucracy has become a goal in itself. If you like British humor (I do), it is hilariously funny. But, of course, once you look behind the humor, it is pretty serious—a self-replicating bureaucracy where self-preservation and the growth of the self-proclaimed "bureaucratic elite" are more important than the fate of the country. There is no corrective force, as politicians are shown as passing ships. And while the 80s TV series focuses on Britain, I would argue the same forces are at play in Germany.
Thanks for the depressing article, Brawl. There is so much to say about the movement of indviduals from the private (productive) sector to the pubic sector and the willingness of citizens to abuse the system for monetary gain. In my opinion this phenomenon distills down to two categories: a) the federal government expanding into areas it does not belong and b) society moving from high-trust to low-trust. Although I very much disagree with the idea of student loan forgiveness or univeral healthcare, I can understsand the perspective of the activist when using the GFC bailouts as a comparison. Furthermore, during Covid when the government was mailing stimulus checks and giving away PPP loans, those individuals who did not receive any money (like me) start to think they are the suckers sitting at the poker table. These governmenal programs start to change the collective psychology of the country and the way citizens think about their relationship with the state (see the book Scandinavian Unexceptionalism: Culture, Markets and the Failure of Third-Way Socialism for further illustration).
Anyhoo, I'll stop here otherwise I'll ramble on for the rest of the day as I have strong feelings about the topic of your article.
It definitely is depressing. If you don’t qualify for a stimulus check, you’re doubly penalized: you’re the sucker, and at the same time you watch how entirely rational behavior by others ends up sawing off the branch everyone is sitting on.
Great article: a form of "intellectual rent-seeking" where the parasite begins to kill the host. I suspect a related development is state-capture (national & EU levels) by "elites" (oligarchs and compradors) for economic rent-seeking to draw additional blood from the people to pay for this imposition in parallel to added taxes.
Germany’s employment numbers are further evidence that the looters and leeches continue to increase their control. The only question is when will Atlas Shrug?
Scary article. Another cliodynamics example is setting up a grid to rely on diffuse, intermittent, and correlated sources of generation. Most of the time it will work but there will come a time when a massive high pressure system reduces wind resources to low levels after a snowstorm that covers solar panels over a large area and a massive blackout occurs
Ludwig von Mises viewed bureaucracy as a rigid, inefficient, and dangerous substitute for market-driven management, characteristic of socialism and government intervention. He argued that bureaucracy operates without profit/loss incentives, leading to stagnant routines,, while serving to restrict freedom and concentrate power. His work emphasizes that bureaucracy is an instrument of compulsion, rather than service.
Great piece. In the Australian context, I tried to get a measure of what I call the private sector bureaucracy: "These jobs are those that are associated with implementing, interpreting, or ensuring compliance with government rules and regulations. Here, this measure includes accountants (excluding payroll officers and accounting clerks), HR professionals and clerks, environmental scientists, barristers, solicitors, and other judicial and legal professionals, safety inspectors, and inspectors and regulatory officers.
Many of these jobs would exist anyway even if the size and scope of government was smaller. The point is not to provide a precise level of private sector jobs that only exist because of government, but to provide an indicative measure of the growth in the kinds of jobs that benefit from a larger and more interventionist state."
The number I came to was an increase from 154,000 private sector bureaucrats in 1986 to over 500,000 today. It would be interesting to see what the data is for Germany and the EU.
That’s striking growth. The expansion is likely even larger in the EU once you factor in SaaS companies built specifically to manage supply-chain compliance, for example.
Really insightful. I’d never thought of Turchin’s work in that light, but it is a very apt extension to look at productive vs state/state-adjacent employment as a sign of accumulating underbrush. Kudos!
The tale of a snake eating itself is not a new one, but it has become a defining metaphor for the relationship between government and economy—a cyclical process where the state's intervention perpetuates its own existence, often at the expense of meaningful progress. This dance between government and economy is as old as civilization itself, but it has taken on new shapes as countries across the globe grapple with the role of the state in economic life.
In the West, particularly in liberal democracies, government intervention is often viewed as a necessity for correcting market failures, ensuring public welfare, and promoting equality. But the structure of these economies—a web of regulations, subsidies, and social programs—has led to a paradox: government becomes the central player in the economy, essentially consuming the market it is meant to serve. The government, by its very nature, becomes part of the economy, and thus, the snake devours its tail. Western systems, touting principles of progressivism and democratic values, often fail to see that when the state becomes the engine of the economy, it cannot help but distort the very market it purports to guide.
Consider the example of Western governments: the U.S., for example, has pursued a model that elevates GDP as its primary metric of success. Why? Because GDP conveniently captures the growth of both the private and public sectors, and in doing so, it rewards a government that grows as it regulates. Under this system, GDP inflates, yes, but it does so by counting government spending, intervention, and debt—metrics that, when examined with a sober lens, show little about the real productivity or the welfare of the average citizen.
Contrast this with more "autocratic" regimes in the East, such as Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China. These are places where the state plays a more hands-on, directive role in shaping the economy. However, these governments do not allow themselves to be consumed by the economy. Instead, they are able to act decisively, shaping markets, fostering investment, and guiding development with a laser focus on outcomes. The result? Rapid growth, elevated standards of living, and a significant shift in global power dynamics.
In these nations, the government might have more control, but it often serves as a facilitator rather than a consumer. The metric of success is not how big government has grown, but the tangible benefits for the people—higher standards of living, infrastructure development, a dynamic business environment. Singapore, for example, has built one of the most competitive economies in the world, yet the state has maintained a critical role without becoming a bloated, parasitic entity.
Western democracies, despite their vaunted progressivism and free-market ideals, often fail to produce similar results. GDP growth might seem robust on paper, but it masks a deeper malaise: a government so entwined with the economy that it becomes less a servant to it and more a part of it. In effect, governments in the West no longer simply serve their people; they feed on the economy in a way that stifles true innovation and growth. This explains why GDP—the very metric that includes government spending—is so often trotted out as proof of success, when, in reality, it might be the measurement of a slow, suffocating decline.
The difference between the East and the West comes down to one simple principle: outcomes. While Western democracies may tout the fairness of their systems, the lived experience of their citizens often tells a different story. The Eastern model, though not without its own flaws, at least delivers on its promises of growth, prosperity, and social mobility. And ultimately, that is the only barometer that matters.
So, as the snake eats itself in the West, it must ask: Is this truly progress, or are we simply feeding the beast at the cost of the very economy we once sought to elevate? The answer is becoming clearer with each passing year.
"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. The Iron Law states that the second group will always gain control, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."
- Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy
It follows that the second group will seek to increase the size of the organization, inevitably at the expense of the organizational goals. This represents a reduction in efficiency - efficacy - at least equal to the rate of increase in staff, always accomplishing less with more.
Metastasizing is another way to put it.
Unrestricted growth, expanding consumption - exactly. Cancer as analogy is a little over used, but it works.
agreed, as with every living organism, it seeks to grow and reproduce. that is bureaucracy's sole motivation
there is a saying in the US, too many chiefs and not enough Indians, which describes this exact phenomenon succinctly. I am thankful that President Trump is seeking to reduce federal government employment aggressively, with the story the administration just altered the status of another 50K workers who can now be dismissed without union headaches. Senator Warren is up in arms because 50% of the Department of Education has been fired, whereas I would like to see the department removed completely.
to follow your metaphor, it appears that Trump is culling the deadwood and getting rid of it completely, reducing that longer term potential conflagration.
The negative press these efforts received goes to show how deep the entanglement between the press and those officials must’ve been.
Exactly!
Exactly. And there is soooo much more to do.
💯
Start with the federal bureaucracy, the slash even deeper the USAID and related funding, so we significantly reduce the number of NGOs, all or most of which are staffed by leeches who could never cut it in the real world.
Prescribed burning, preventative maintenance! As well as the college at all cost mindset finally being challenged. Challenged by the actual job market, not the narrative.
The whole process might need a bit more of explanation.
Elite over-production occurs in a society because the economic situation is deteriorating as food/energy is getting scarcer. Thus people tend to invest in education for their kids (or ask the state to do so) so they can individually keep ahead and hopefully still get a good job.
So the first sign to watch is the rise of number of students and awarded degrees. Especially managerial/non-productive ones that are easier to award without objectively measurable skills.
Then, of course, the state (and to a lesser the degree the private sector) is pressured to provide jobs (and wages) for these new graduates. There are many ways to do that. Inflating administration, increasing the number of organizations producing standards, swell the judicial system by making legal procedures more complex, generalizing DEI... All of them are costly, tend to be parasitic and, anyway, can only respond to the employment situation up to a point.
And this is where it's getting dangerous and can turn violent. Because more and more graduates don't get the job and the incomes they were expecting, they tend to form a counter-elite and challenge an established order they consider as morally unfair. Right when state and private sector economic health is deteriorating even faster.
If nothing is done to defuse the situation, it usually end up with a revolution or a civil war until death rate brings an end to the overproduction...
Thanks, that’s a valuable addition. And yes, the role of education and rising expectations is an early signal.
In the 1980s, the French government announced that its goal was to award a high school diploma to 80% of each age group. Then young people took to the streets en masse to ensure that this diploma would give them free and unconditional access to university.
From then on, academic standards began to decline, but at least students were not registered as unemployed...
A typical quick win for everyone involved that later turns out to be a loss.
Thanks for the clarification. I recently had a conversation with an 87 year old man in Switzerland. I asked him about what some of the major changes are, that he observes in his environment. He said: “When I graduated university I had four job offers without applying anywhere. Both my grandson and son are currently unemployed despite being more qualified than I was in their age.”
Great point. If you don't mind watching older TV series, the 80s British TV series Yes, Minister (not the newer version) focuses, in a very humorous way, on how bureaucracy has become a goal in itself. If you like British humor (I do), it is hilariously funny. But, of course, once you look behind the humor, it is pretty serious—a self-replicating bureaucracy where self-preservation and the growth of the self-proclaimed "bureaucratic elite" are more important than the fate of the country. There is no corrective force, as politicians are shown as passing ships. And while the 80s TV series focuses on Britain, I would argue the same forces are at play in Germany.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/YesMinister#:~:text=Yes%2C%20Minister%20(1980%2D1984,also%20wrote%20all%20the%20episodes.
Thanks for the tip! I’ll check it out.
You beat me to it! I could picture Sir Humphrey as I read the article.
Thanks for the depressing article, Brawl. There is so much to say about the movement of indviduals from the private (productive) sector to the pubic sector and the willingness of citizens to abuse the system for monetary gain. In my opinion this phenomenon distills down to two categories: a) the federal government expanding into areas it does not belong and b) society moving from high-trust to low-trust. Although I very much disagree with the idea of student loan forgiveness or univeral healthcare, I can understsand the perspective of the activist when using the GFC bailouts as a comparison. Furthermore, during Covid when the government was mailing stimulus checks and giving away PPP loans, those individuals who did not receive any money (like me) start to think they are the suckers sitting at the poker table. These governmenal programs start to change the collective psychology of the country and the way citizens think about their relationship with the state (see the book Scandinavian Unexceptionalism: Culture, Markets and the Failure of Third-Way Socialism for further illustration).
Anyhoo, I'll stop here otherwise I'll ramble on for the rest of the day as I have strong feelings about the topic of your article.
Enjoy your Sunday!
It definitely is depressing. If you don’t qualify for a stimulus check, you’re doubly penalized: you’re the sucker, and at the same time you watch how entirely rational behavior by others ends up sawing off the branch everyone is sitting on.
Enjoy your Sunday too!
Great article: a form of "intellectual rent-seeking" where the parasite begins to kill the host. I suspect a related development is state-capture (national & EU levels) by "elites" (oligarchs and compradors) for economic rent-seeking to draw additional blood from the people to pay for this imposition in parallel to added taxes.
Thank you! Yes, rent-seeking is a closely related element, in my view.
An EU High Commissioner makes around EUR330-380k per year, plus expenses I bet. Pretty sweet sinecure for such a pointless satrap!
Germany’s employment numbers are further evidence that the looters and leeches continue to increase their control. The only question is when will Atlas Shrug?
Yes, the question isn’t if anymore, but when.
Scary article. Another cliodynamics example is setting up a grid to rely on diffuse, intermittent, and correlated sources of generation. Most of the time it will work but there will come a time when a massive high pressure system reduces wind resources to low levels after a snowstorm that covers solar panels over a large area and a massive blackout occurs
Exactly. Different domain, same structure: long stretches of normal operation masking growing vulnerability to correlated shocks.
Great and disturbing article!
Reminds me of BUREAUCRACY by von Mises 1944.
Ludwig von Mises viewed bureaucracy as a rigid, inefficient, and dangerous substitute for market-driven management, characteristic of socialism and government intervention. He argued that bureaucracy operates without profit/loss incentives, leading to stagnant routines,, while serving to restrict freedom and concentrate power. His work emphasizes that bureaucracy is an instrument of compulsion, rather than service.
Explains a lot of todays misery.
Thank you! The fact that his description of bureaucracy remains so accurate more than 80 years later speaks to the precision of his analysis.
Great piece. In the Australian context, I tried to get a measure of what I call the private sector bureaucracy: "These jobs are those that are associated with implementing, interpreting, or ensuring compliance with government rules and regulations. Here, this measure includes accountants (excluding payroll officers and accounting clerks), HR professionals and clerks, environmental scientists, barristers, solicitors, and other judicial and legal professionals, safety inspectors, and inspectors and regulatory officers.
Many of these jobs would exist anyway even if the size and scope of government was smaller. The point is not to provide a precise level of private sector jobs that only exist because of government, but to provide an indicative measure of the growth in the kinds of jobs that benefit from a larger and more interventionist state."
The number I came to was an increase from 154,000 private sector bureaucrats in 1986 to over 500,000 today. It would be interesting to see what the data is for Germany and the EU.
That’s striking growth. The expansion is likely even larger in the EU once you factor in SaaS companies built specifically to manage supply-chain compliance, for example.
All hat and no cattle.
This was a sharp diagnosis, Argentina springs to mind, strong echoes of the same playbook that impoverished it
Thank you! Argentina is a great example of related dynamics.
Np! Indeed!🙏
Really insightful. I’d never thought of Turchin’s work in that light, but it is a very apt extension to look at productive vs state/state-adjacent employment as a sign of accumulating underbrush. Kudos!
Thanks, Marvin, much appreciated!Once you realize how many roles exist just so someone can be “head of something,” it’s hard to unsee it.
The tale of a snake eating itself is not a new one, but it has become a defining metaphor for the relationship between government and economy—a cyclical process where the state's intervention perpetuates its own existence, often at the expense of meaningful progress. This dance between government and economy is as old as civilization itself, but it has taken on new shapes as countries across the globe grapple with the role of the state in economic life.
In the West, particularly in liberal democracies, government intervention is often viewed as a necessity for correcting market failures, ensuring public welfare, and promoting equality. But the structure of these economies—a web of regulations, subsidies, and social programs—has led to a paradox: government becomes the central player in the economy, essentially consuming the market it is meant to serve. The government, by its very nature, becomes part of the economy, and thus, the snake devours its tail. Western systems, touting principles of progressivism and democratic values, often fail to see that when the state becomes the engine of the economy, it cannot help but distort the very market it purports to guide.
Consider the example of Western governments: the U.S., for example, has pursued a model that elevates GDP as its primary metric of success. Why? Because GDP conveniently captures the growth of both the private and public sectors, and in doing so, it rewards a government that grows as it regulates. Under this system, GDP inflates, yes, but it does so by counting government spending, intervention, and debt—metrics that, when examined with a sober lens, show little about the real productivity or the welfare of the average citizen.
Contrast this with more "autocratic" regimes in the East, such as Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China. These are places where the state plays a more hands-on, directive role in shaping the economy. However, these governments do not allow themselves to be consumed by the economy. Instead, they are able to act decisively, shaping markets, fostering investment, and guiding development with a laser focus on outcomes. The result? Rapid growth, elevated standards of living, and a significant shift in global power dynamics.
In these nations, the government might have more control, but it often serves as a facilitator rather than a consumer. The metric of success is not how big government has grown, but the tangible benefits for the people—higher standards of living, infrastructure development, a dynamic business environment. Singapore, for example, has built one of the most competitive economies in the world, yet the state has maintained a critical role without becoming a bloated, parasitic entity.
Western democracies, despite their vaunted progressivism and free-market ideals, often fail to produce similar results. GDP growth might seem robust on paper, but it masks a deeper malaise: a government so entwined with the economy that it becomes less a servant to it and more a part of it. In effect, governments in the West no longer simply serve their people; they feed on the economy in a way that stifles true innovation and growth. This explains why GDP—the very metric that includes government spending—is so often trotted out as proof of success, when, in reality, it might be the measurement of a slow, suffocating decline.
The difference between the East and the West comes down to one simple principle: outcomes. While Western democracies may tout the fairness of their systems, the lived experience of their citizens often tells a different story. The Eastern model, though not without its own flaws, at least delivers on its promises of growth, prosperity, and social mobility. And ultimately, that is the only barometer that matters.
So, as the snake eats itself in the West, it must ask: Is this truly progress, or are we simply feeding the beast at the cost of the very economy we once sought to elevate? The answer is becoming clearer with each passing year.
As Turchin notes, China seems to be in the relatively stable part of the cycle, which doesn’t mean exempt from it.
No one ever is
There is a fantastic discussion of "elite overproduction" at this link. https://substack.com/home/post/p-187193203?source=queue