Monday, March 9, 2009

If It Ain't Broke, Fix Until Paralyzed

by Smitty
Morgan Freeberg is always worth a read. One hopes at some point to hoist a beverage with the fellow. He offers a pair of thoughtful concepts in this post to clear the palate of all the Limbaugh/Steele/Coulter/Meghan business.
Morgan’s First Rule of Government: Life thrives in order but matures toward chaos. Government has a role as long as order and life serve the same purpose; where their paths diverge, government must yield.

Morgan’s Second Rule of Government: Consensus thrives in logic but develops toward nonsense. Government has a role in deriving its policies from consensus, as long as the consensus is rational; when consensus becomes silly, government must remain logical.
These organizational behavior observations recall a bit of Jerry's wisdom:
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.
In the mad haste to expand the government to include the entire population (as an employee or client) sometimes the classic wisdom is overlooked:
John 15:2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, bleck. I didn't even realize until you said it, but this whole stupid Meghan thing is just to throw the other shoe of the "Get Conservatives to scream at each other" strategy.

    God, I hope this is just Meghan doing a pathetic "me too!" and not the Obama administration wasting even more of everyone's time.

    The Rush thing was a great week long distraction, but enough already. I'm looking at you, Newsweek.

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  2. Morgan Freeberg often writes on his blog that nobody reads it.

    Happily, he's wrong about that. It may not be the hit count generator of other blogs, but there is a lot of good stuff there - better than most.

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  3. @thirteen28:
    Yes, indeed. HoE is of sufficient quality that you could compose a "Top 10 posts in this blog" post that would really rock hard (he said, wondering if he wasn't too tired for all that).

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