JENNIFER III: IRON LAW OF BUREAUCRACY AND THE GOVT. MONOPOLY ON FORCE

http://www.itakeliberty.com/2010/06/the-iron-law-and-the-monopoly-on-force/

After I wrote “Attention Shifting To Fourth Generation War” I received a comment that added this little gem of wisdom to the discussion:



What you are referring to WRT TPTB wanting to maintain themselves in power has been quantified by Jerry Pournelle as “the Iron Law of Bureaucracy: 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.” [hyperlinks added]



I’ve heard of the Iron Law before, but never thought to apply it at the state and global levels.



After chewing on it for a bit I realized the Iron Law is just a derivative of human nature. Human beings can be relied upon to act in their own self-interest, and if that self-interest gets tied up in the existence of an organization, that self interest will shift to support the organization in question. It’s human nature writ large.



Which brings us to the question of how we arrived where we are today.





Lawyers like Josh Horwitz and Casey Anderson (authors of Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea) would have you believe that the state’s monopoly on the use of force is essential to the ’survival of democracy and ordered liberty’.



And they’re right. Democracy is the system of unrestricted majority rule, or as Ben Franklin supposedly said: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” A “well armed lamb contesting the vote” ruins the plans for that barbeque.



As for ‘ordered liberty’, it’s an oxymoron any intellectually honest economist would reject outright. It betrays the fundamental flaw in collectivist thinking: the utopian idea that human nature can somehow be defeated and a new age of prosperity can begin.



The framers and ratifiers of the Constitution understood the Iron Law well. They knew that government always turns to support it’s own interests at the expense of those of the people. Or as the Declaration of Independence explains:



We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis added]



No, the ‘insurrectionist idea’ wasn’t something the NRA and Timothy McVeigh invented in the 90’s as Horwitz and Co. would have you believe. It was built into the system from the beginning, in 1776, before there was even a constitution. It was the reason the federal government was supposed to be limited by things like the Bill of Rights.

Damn good reasoning.  You should click the provided link to read the rest.  http://www.itakeliberty.com/2010/06/the-iron-law-and-the-monopoly-on-force/