The Shirky Principle

Clay Shirky quoted by The Technium in The Shirky Principle.

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

Echoes The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities by Mancur Olson. His thesis was on the lines that in a stable society, eventually growth and prosperity are subverted by interests groups who strangle the politic through rent seeking and regulatory capture (my words, not his).