Haldane Principle - Ovem lupo commitere

The Haldane Principle from Wikipedia.

In British research policy, the Haldane principle is the idea that decisions about what to spend research funds on should be made by researchers rather than politicians. It is named after Richard Burdon Haldane, who in 1904 and from 1909 to 1918 chaired committees and commissions which recommended this policy.

Hmmm. In the common parlance.

Beneficiaries of free stuff should be the only ones to decide how that free stuff is distributed.

Put that way, it is patently absurd. I suspect what Haldane was getting at is that research funds should be distributed based on evidence-based decision-making.

A nice sentiment, but constantly undermined in reality by the Iron Law of Oligarchy by Robert Michels.

Michels' theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise.

[snip]

According to Michels all organizations eventually come to be run by a "leadership class", who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons, political strategists, organizers, etc. for the organization. Far from being "servants of the masses", Michels argues this "leadership class," rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank-and-file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes. Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.

This is related to The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olson. From Wikipedia.

It develops a theory of political science and economics of concentrated benefits versus diffuse costs. Its central argument is that concentrated minor interests will be overrepresented and diffuse majority interests trumped, due to a free-rider problem that is stronger when a group becomes larger.

The dynamic of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs is also what underpins Eric Hoffer's observation in The Temper of Our Time:

What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

Of course, we don't need to be so high falutin.

We have adages that cover this inclination to let the beneficiaries determine the costs to be imposed on others. In the US it is "Don't set the fox to guard the henhouse" but the Romans had

Ovem lupo commitere
- To set a wolf to guard sheep