On the Iron Law of Bureaucracy

I find myself thinking more and more of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. 

This states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

I was just reading Dominic Cummins's latest substack post- People, ideas, machines VI: the War Diaries of Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and he mentions briefly Iron Laws of bureaucracy. As he notes:

Human nature and the dynamics of large organisations don’t change so the same problems recur from the start of written history, and nobody can find a way of creating institutions that surmount these problems for long.

Indeed, it seems to be an inevitability that in all organizations Historically the main advantage of private organizations over government agencies used to be that eventually, they would have a clear out to improve profitability, or go bust. This is also the advantage of startups, but if they end up e succeed the same way once the founders move on/retire or reach a certain size, as we saw with the tech startups like Twitter, Google, etc (the mass layoffs in the tech sector suggest a large amount of bloat, whether this cost cutting is enough remains to be seen? 

So is there a way to prevent the Iron law? Not as long as large organizations are needed and especially in the public sector. Cutting the budgets usually results in Washington Monument Syndrome- cutting front-line services visible to the public and keeping the bloat intact. Most politicians are uninterested in this and lack the skills needed. Even when you do get ministers who try the pushback ususally results in the status quo. Maybe the only solution is a slash and burn approach, replacing organisations with new insitutions every few years.

In the private sector having more owner managers would help, if it you own (not other people's) money on the line it incentivisations againt allowing bloat. Maybe more frachises and mutual structures would help?