Eighteenth law of worker entropy
|
Office anthropology™
|
The JC’s eighteenth law of worker entropy, also known as Büchstein’s special theory of Parkinson’s Law, states that:
“work does not expand to fit the time available, but the amount of money available.”
Since, as Benjamin Franklin told us, “time is money” this is no more than a restatement of Parkinson’s law: there is a steady relationship —“commercialogical constant” — between the amount of money at stake and the amount of money agents will be able to extract, risk-free, from the principals by convincing them they can help ensure its safe conveyance.
Time and money being interchangeable, and both being basically unlimited in the civil service of the 1960s, it is easy to see how Parkinson came to his conclusion: it is no less accurate than Newton’s, but no less fundamentally misconceived. The constant is not time, but the speed of money.