Three Parkinson workarounds
One major problem, maybe the deepest problem and source of most other problems, is the Parkinson loop. Governments and corporations seek only GROWTH, not SERVICE or SOLVING.

When an institution has a healthy negative feedback loop to its customers or citizens, it works to gain more customers and to make the customers richer and better. Seeking profit forces a business to treat its customers and employees well. Loyalty is the key to profit.

Henry Ford, who was NOT a nice altruistic man, expressed this loop clearly. He wanted his employees to be able to buy Fords. So he treated them well, paid them well, and tried to improve their lives. In return they stayed on the job, improved their skills, and performed more efficiently. Loyalty for loyalty, respect for respect.

Now corporations seek GROWTH, so they move fast and break things to maximize SHARE VALUE.

Parkinson is most obvious in bureaucracies, which create problems in order to justify more power and budget to create more problems.

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How do we break out of Parkinson? I've discussed two ways extensively.

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A strong leader who genuinely wants to solve problems and improve the company or country can break up the structures that maintain the death loop.

FDR knew exactly what he was doing. He was facing the three legs of Deepstate: Banks, Intel agencies, and Activists.

1. On his first day in office he started breaking and constraining the banks.

2. He then repealed Prohibition, which removed the Parkinson loop from FBI and ATF. Those agancies could no longer build gangs to provide "problems" that would be aggravated by building more gangs.

3. He then started to solve the overall economic problem, which relieved the stresses that were driving millions of working-class men into fascist and socialist activism.

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I've also discussed an unusual and perhaps unique exception to Parkinson. Trinity House was founded by Henry VIII and still operates with its original purpose intact. In 500 years it never lost track of its PROBLEM-SOLVING goal, never descended into pure growth-loop.

Trinity House succeeds because its income depends strictly and precisely on SOLVING one particular problem. Its purpose is to keep ships safe. It maintains lighthouses and radio beacons, and it has sponsored research in fog warnings, radio communication, and optics. Trinity House is funded by a tax on every commercial ship that docks in Britain. If ships are failing to reach port, its funding decreases. So it runs on a pure and simple profit loop, like a non-stock business.

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Yesterday I noticed a third workaround while thinking about Brahe's work.

Tycho thus fits firmly into the tradition of Follies that serve science. Follies fade quickly after the rich owner dies, but the contributions to the work of other scholars remain and grow.

An institution that fades can't undergo the Parkinson process. Unlike bureaucracies and foundations, it can't turn to crime and corruption. The product grows without interference from the now-corrupt institution.

This is Nature's way of avoiding Parkinson. A person or a company or a bureaucracy dies when its purpose is done. The influence, if carefully cultivated by heirs and successors, can remain and grow, seeding more service and solving.

We've been blocking two of those natural deaths. We no longer allow a major company to go bankrupt when it loses its connection to customers. We maintain the loop by bailing out the worst and most destructive companies. And we never repeal a bad law or dissolve a bad agency. We just keep pumping more money into the evil monsters.

And we partially block the function of personal death by keeping old monsters in office long after they should have retired. Within an institution, retirement breaks the personal blackmail loop of a demon. Younger executives take his place, starting fresh on blackmail. Occasionally one of the new executives may even turn out to be a problem-solver like FDR or Putin.

Labels: Parkinson

  ¶ 8:03 AM