the person pushing for the software is looking to use software to enforce bureaucratic control that they have been unable to otherwise exercise
This is frequently my observation as well. In the process of creating stricter control the bureaucrat increases the the power of their bureaucracy while shifting the blame for any problems to a faceless entity.
They then institute all sorts of punishments and controls to insure it must be used.
This leads me to one of my primary frustrations with the bureaucratization of our lives. Severe consequences are attached to low stakes situations and rational individuals who see the harm caused by the situation are rendered powerless to make changes.
> Severe consequences are attached to low stakes situations and rational individuals who see the harm caused by the situation are rendered powerless to make changes.
You can see the process at work within this very thread -- "And within that chain, there should be legal recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validation, should the software fail to perform its task correctly." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26228195)
People seem unable to imagine any way to improve things except by adding more and more legal consequences. We need to stop doing this!
This is an excellent observation about the process of bureaucratization in action. For some reason the solution to the failings of bureaucracy ends up being even more bureaucracy and even greater consequences for failing to play by the rules of the bureaucracy.
Is bureaucracy like violence? If it isn't working you aren't using enough of it?
Yeah, it's tempting to imagine that all the problems in the world can be solved in the same kind of way, whether through more bureaucracy or more violence. Another example is the libertarian idea that all problems can be solved through the application of market forces. Maybe the general term for this is solutionism -- the idea that problems have "solutions" which take certain standard forms, when really these problems are the natural result of various patterns of human activity which may or may not respond to the "solution" you chose. In the worst case, you can end up in a sort of feedback loop, where an earlier "solution" was actually the cause of the problem that justifies the next "solution" and so on.
Solutionism seems like an apt term. In addition, solutionists may feel bound to their ideology and unable to see problems caused by their solutions for what they are leading the types of feedback loops you describe. People double down on their beliefs when presented with opposing viewpoints or even contrary evidence all of the time. Interesting observation.
> In the process of creating stricter control the bureaucrat increases the the power of their bureaucracy while shifting the blame for any problems to a faceless entity.
They are basically using software to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. i.e. the shirky principle
This is frequently my observation as well. In the process of creating stricter control the bureaucrat increases the the power of their bureaucracy while shifting the blame for any problems to a faceless entity.
They then institute all sorts of punishments and controls to insure it must be used.
This leads me to one of my primary frustrations with the bureaucratization of our lives. Severe consequences are attached to low stakes situations and rational individuals who see the harm caused by the situation are rendered powerless to make changes.