Take a few individuals and organize them and an amazing thing happens. A singular entity -- the organization -- effectively becomes alive. It creates a heartbeat of its very own and it, the organization, will fight to stay alive from that point forward.

This is true of all types of organizations, both for- and non-profit. Even though the organization is an artificial entity, it will mimic a biologic life-form.

It will first and foremost fight to stay alive. It will seek to expand and grow. It will seek out resources and will fight to retain these resources for its own uses. It will attempt to take care of its own in all of its actions.

And it will do these things almost regardless who the individual members are or how often they come and go. Although directed by living people, the organization has a life of its own in many profound ways. This isn’t a philosophical position -- it is a fact.

In a for-profit organization all of these organizational drives are tempered by the reality of the marketplace. They must convince individuals to voluntarily part with their money for whatever goods and services are offered and to do so in a profitable manner. Otherwise they will cease to exist. These organizational heartbeats depend on success to survive.

But non-profit organizations aren’t bound by this reality. And the biggest, most powerful, and most threatening non-profit organizations that exist are governments.

The non-profits we call “government” don’t have to convince people to voluntarily part with their money. They can force the issue. They don’t have to provide quality goods and/or services and achieving these goals at a profit or even breakeven is not required. Thus there are no feedback loops whereby reality can easily alter the path of these non-profit entities. Effective feedback allows for gradual change and adaptation. A lack of feedback sets the stage for catastrophic failures.

Government is often said to be inefficient. It is not. It is very efficient but its goal is not necessarily what we the people believe. As an example look at the federal war on poverty. Since this “war” was declared in 1964, the federal government has spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. But only about 15% of the money allocated to fighting this “war” actually makes it to the poor -- 85% is consumed by the entity itself. The organization is quite effective at keeping resources for itself.

Analyze almost any government program and you will see how efficient the entity is in retaining resources for itself. A hundred-plus governmental organizations involved in a single issue? As they say in the software business, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature!

This is also the reason the non-profits we call government will never be satisfied with the money sent to them via taxes. From the organization’s perspective (not necessarily the employees but the organization itself), it will always be underfunded. Always.

These non-profits generally grow by constantly adding people, either directly as employees or indirectly by making others dependent on their actions and favors. These individuals will almost always vote in their own self-interest and thus the entity rewards and strengthens itself in a democracy by this constant expansion.

And amazingly, these activities have almost no relationship to the actual people who staff the organization. Some people might hasten the speed of expansion, others to slow it, but the organizational entity behaves as it does by its very nature. The process is much like a honey bee hive where the hive itself (an abstraction really) mimics intelligence and purpose, even though its individual bees have very little of either.

And these people can all be quite moral and “good public servants”, yet the organization will operate as it will. Swarm intelligence and the self-organization it drives ensure this is true in almost all situations related to government.

We need to collectively understand and accept this very biologic nature of every entity created by this thing we call government. Every single position, every single bureaucracy becomes another beating heart that will strive to continue and grow.

It is easy to blame one political party for the expansion of these non-profits but this growth occurs with either a Republican or Democrat at the helm. 

We see this most spectacularly in the transformation of the federal government. Rather than the constitutionally construed federation of states with federal power being strictly limited, the non-profit we call the federal government has expanded to effectively subjugate the states and all citizens.

From an organizational perspective, this was to be expected. In fact, it would be shocking if this were not the case. The federal government has become much like the Ring of Power in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings -- one ring to rule them all.

For all citizens, the ultimate question isn’t whether this evolution is good or bad but rather it is sustainable and can it work long-term? The answer to this is clear. Left unrestrained, government is much like a kudzu plant. Sooner or later it is destined to overgrow its environment until it collapses in a catastrophic failure -- remember that lack of feedback. Unless the life of these non-profits is constrained in some way, this process will always occur.

This is a basic reality of organizational behavior. These organizations truly live in many profound ways and unless we citizens understand and accept this fact we will never be able to manage them. We either learn to do so or they will most certainly be the destroyer of us all.

John Conlin is an expert in organizational design and change. He is also President and founder of E.I.C. Enterprises, www.eicenterprises.org, a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to spreading the truth here and around the world, primarily through K-12 education.