"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." -- Clay Shirky<p>This is brilliantly well put and one of the most important reasons capitalism works so much better than any other system: destruction of the preserving institutions is built in to the process.<p>"Too big to fail", on the other hand, is something completely different.
This is a variation of a famous aphorism by one of the founders of sociology to the effect that an institution's first purpose is to perpetuate itself and only secondarily to achieve its stated goal. I heard it years ago, attributed to Durkheim, I think, though I was unable to find an attribution the last time I looked. Perhaps someone here knows?<p>In any case, it isn't original enough to be named after Shirky (from what little I've read of whom, he's flexible-minded enough not to care).
Wow, doesn't that seem to sum up the institution of the Big Pharma industry?<p>I was just on a plane to New Orleans on Monday and sat next to a former high-level employee at a pharma company who even said "we were in the business of managing sickness, not curing it."
I'm shocked, humans and human institutions act in their own self interest?<p>If an institution's strongest aim is e.g. profit/preservation (as it often is) then of course it is trying to preserve or create conditions where the product or service is attractive. This often includes undermining better solutions.<p>Just look at the lobbying money flowing through Washington DC for blatant examples. Other situations are more subtle.
Your missing the point - any social construction that provides a solution to a problem no longer has a point if that problem ceases to exist. Therefore the construction will not just act to preserve itself, it will try to preserve it's antithesis.<p>It's not just acting in it's own interests, in extreme cases it's prolonging the very thing it's set up to destroy.<p>In other words - Batman / Joker
This is a generalization of Neil K's law of software consultancy: "Any firm that calls itself a solutions provider is actually a problem provider".<p>I mean that literally. The consultant offers a solution to an acute problem, in exchange for the client voluntarily accepting a chronic problem.<p>Typically, only open source or open standard technologies actually <i>solve</i> problems.
That quote was from Jobs in 1997. Now look where Apple is now and see if they've made any similar comments. Apple was more vulnerable back then.<p>The fact of the matter is Microsoft executives are still openly hostile towards free software, always threatening they own IP that overlaps with a lot of open source. This is why Amazon pays Microsoft for Linux patent coverage and why TomTom gets sued for using open source FAT32 drivers. So it makes sense to be wary.