The Iron Law of Bureaucracy
The ILB Explains a Whole Lot About Propaganda Corporate Journalism, But Leaves a Giant Hole as to the Motives of our Independent Giant Platform Whales
The closer you are to power, the more that power bends you to its will.
Those that can resist this pressure are excommunicated from the tribe.
Those that are left then begin to run roughshod over any guiding principle as they exhibit increasingly blind loyalty to the group.
The End.
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Okay, for real. Let’s dive in a bit.
The Iron Law of Bureaucracy is a paradigm, a framework, for understanding how and why people within organizations begin to behave in odd and contradictory ways, often at cross purposes to their organization’s original mission or principles.
The ILB is usually credited to Jerry Pournelle, who I quote:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
I’ve also seen a related and very similar schema known as The Iron Law of Institutions.
Let’s briefly apply this theoretical concept to some of our real world nightmare fuel dystopic phenomena currently going down in real time.
Does this not seem like a powerful descriptor of say, The Intelligence Community of the United States, aka The I-C, the Spooks, the Security State, the Deep State, the Blob?
These people probably got into their various alphabet agencies thinking they were patriotic Americans doing a great service, defending democracy, liberty, human rights, freedom, and so forth.
And somewhere along the way all that got twisted into, “Spy on all Americans and make a mockery of liberty, (spy on members of Congress while you’re at it!), then just lie to Congress about it, create domestic false flags and entrap citizens, cover up war crimes, torture either directly or through satellite groups and then cover that up, too, then go chase whistleblower or journos who expose the crimes and imprison them; disrupt and coup democratically elected countries, plunder said countries of resources so that multinational corporations can thrive, and on and on…”; and in effect become no different than any other unchecked corrupt entity of power since Planet Human began.
Heck, you could probably apply this ILB schema to the Catholic Church, which chose to just move pedophile priests around rather than take the organizational hit and honor their OG principles.
Again, protect the org at all costs. See how the guiding focus shifts?
How about the public health community?
As the Biden Administration was running water for the unelected WEF Administration, and was busy pushing through childhood approval of the experimental mRNA jabs, a few members of the first group within the ILB paradigm in both the CDC and the FDA began jumping ship.
These more principled individuals were more loyal to the science and the public good than to Klaus and WEF and Bill Gates and Pfizer and Moderna and Black Rock, etc.
Those that are left now?
They are all in. Team Organization over Team Public Health. They have made their decision.
Whether it serves public health or whether it spikes all cause mortality to 40% and culls the useless eaters, or just disregulates the immune system of millions…
These are no longer particularly salient issues to our remaining CDC/FDA/WHO bureaucrats.
What is salient?
Protect the tribe. Protect the organization.
Dear readers. Nobody and I mean NO-FREAKING-BODY left within these sinking ships is not aware of all the stuff that we are aware of about these jabs.
They know, homies. They know.
They will try to pretend like they don’t know, that new data emerged.
It’s bullshit. And don’t you for a minute let them get away with the excuses and the spin, which will be forthcoming.
***EDITED TO ADD***VALUE SUBSTACKING***
And on cue, Pfizer Thug Albert Bourlas is trying to spin himself away from the shit storm brewing.
Everything I just said about Public Health Bureaucrats also applies to the Propaganda News Media.
In my last post, we delved into how the Biden Administration pumped a large ad buy into all the corporate media, and guaranteed a unanimity of “safe and effective, a jab in every arm” coverage.
People don’t end up sitting the desk of MSNBC or CNN making $30million a year without being loyal soldiers to the network and its owners.
Occasionally you see journos bailing from the Big Boys, just like the principled CDC/FDA goal true believers bailed when they saw the Bill Gates writing on the wall.
Sharyll Atkisson, Emerald Robinson, Andrea Peckary, a former MSNBC producer, Michell Tafoya, and so forth. Drawing a line in the sand.
This is what my usual target of discussion, Glenn Greenwald, did with The Intercept.
Might be what Matt Taibbi did in bailing/getting sacked? from Rolling Stone.
Did they just go halfway, though?
On COVID? On the injections?
Did they get about halfway across the river to full principle reality, and decide to stop rowing so hard? Just get on the raft…and float a bit?
I really want to know. They are not loyal to an organization, and their stock in trade has always been about the original journalistic principles of truth telling.
What happened there?
My guiding suspicions have been twofold:
They got the jabs, probably on groupthink norm medical community advice, and thus have little appetite for debunking their own decision.
They want to still be socially connected to the tribe that they quasi-renounced.
Getting a bit awkward, isn’t it?
Our government is saturated by evil people with evil intentions. And that's both parties. To them America is an endless source of money and power and perverted entertainment. Our Congress sits at the console of Sin and twists and turns the knobs of control with endless glee and abandon. They don't even care how badly they screw up, they are insulated from their onerous games. They do not have a normal care in the world. We, the regular everyday people are forced to try and exist inside this man made purgatory. Our lives are so far removed from the way they were once upon a time. We have this childish theory that if we only knew what's going on behind the scenes, inside the machine, then we could form a plan, design a strategy to survive in this insane theater of lies. We think, if we only knew the truth. Here's the truth...the truth is we are only worker ants. We exist to entertain the All Mighty Ones and keep their infrastructure running. They don't even need to pay us if the truth be known. If push came to shove we would work for food and cough syrup and Monday night football. The power brokers of the world laugh at us because we are laughable. Ten percent of us do 90% of the work. And 1% of us decide how 99 % of us get to exist. Percentages change when people like Soros and Pelosi and Hillary finally die. Those who are next in line to fill in for the kingpins have to go through a learning curve before they can get up to speed and try to outdo the levels of damage caused by their predecessors. My theory is that they do not die, they just transition into newer bodies and continue to wreak havoc on the rest of us.
Dang SH. You bring the thunder! This article is great! So glad to discover your Substack!!!