{"id":113,"date":"2004-10-01T23:29:38","date_gmt":"2004-10-02T06:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/wp\/?p=113"},"modified":"2004-10-02T12:40:36","modified_gmt":"2004-10-02T19:40:36","slug":"a-comment-turned-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/a-comment-turned-post\/","title":{"rendered":"A comment-turned-post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Erik, of Freedomdown.net asks:<br \/>\n&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.freedomdown.net\/index.php?p=6\">Is it really that hard to imagine that people sometimes just do things because they are the right thing to do?<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And I respond (it was a comment, but it got way too long):<\/p>\n<p>No, it is not hard to believe that, because this is often why people do things. I made no claim to the contrary. What I <i>do<\/i> believe is that, when you take the aggregate of what the CIA does, it is not &#8220;the right thing.&#8221; So where does this behavior arise from, when there are, no doubt, many people in that organization trying to do the right thing &#8211; trying to protect us from terrorism; trying to save lives; trying to make the world a better place &#8211; not because it is neccesarily in their immediate self interest, but because it is the right thing to do?<\/p>\n<p>And the answer I always arrive at is that there is another motivation that drives the organization as a whole that is different than what drives most individuals. And, from the way I understand incentives, the thing that makes successful government bureacracies is far different than what makes a successful corporation (ie, pleasing the customers). The primary driving incentive for government bureacracies &#8211; and this is no fault of their own; it is an effect of the system &#8211; is to increase their size and stature in the system. No other goal, <strong>as an organization<\/strong> serves everyone in the organization. Individuals may be strongly motivated to do the right thing, but the organization rarely is. And from the track record of the CIA, I would doubt that it has, as an organization, always had the best motivations.<\/p>\n<p>Conprendez-vous?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Erik, of Freedomdown.net asks: &#8220;Is it really that hard to imagine that people sometimes just do things because they are the right thing to do?&#8221; And I respond (it was a comment, but it got way too long): No, it is not hard to believe that, because this is often why people do things. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}