A crux of the discussion around this topic seems to be the exact definition of “purpose” being used.
Is the purpose of a system defined as: The original intent of those who designed and/or implemented it Or The various intents of those incentivized to maintain the system in its realized form Or Some combination of those?
Many times the original intent of a system will have little resemblance to its results, (hence the popular appeal of POSIWID), but it can be true that: 1. Most systems are not deliberately designed to be bad and 2. Many systems create unintended bad incentives ala Goodhart and 3. Systems that create bad incentives are likely to have their purposes co-opted by those benefiting from the incentives, making it very difficult to iteratively improve said systems. See: Unnecessarily complex tax code creates necessity for tax-help services and software. Subsequent movements to simplify tax code are resisted by entrenched interests who benefit from the complexity.
TL;DR: the Original Intended Purpose and the Intended Purposes of Current Proponents can be dramatically different, proportional to how well the system fulfilled its original intent and how strong of perverse incentives it created.
A crux of the discussion around this topic seems to be the exact definition of “purpose” being used.
Is the purpose of a system defined as:
The original intent of those who designed and/or implemented it
Or
The various intents of those incentivized to maintain the system in its realized form
Or
Some combination of those?
Many times the original intent of a system will have little resemblance to its results, (hence the popular appeal of POSIWID), but it can be true that:
1. Most systems are not deliberately designed to be bad
and
2. Many systems create unintended bad incentives ala Goodhart
and
3. Systems that create bad incentives are likely to have their purposes co-opted by those benefiting from the incentives, making it very difficult to iteratively improve said systems.
See: Unnecessarily complex tax code creates necessity for tax-help services and software. Subsequent movements to simplify tax code are resisted by entrenched interests who benefit from the complexity.
TL;DR: the Original Intended Purpose and the Intended Purposes of Current Proponents can be dramatically different, proportional to how well the system fulfilled its original intent and how strong of perverse incentives it created.