Searle’s Making of the Social World, Goodhart’s Law and Industrial Complexes

Goodhart’s Law famously states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” In the context of large industrial complexes like healthcare, the automobile industry, the military, and government, this law helps us understand how the original public-serving missions have been subverted into self-perpetuating systems that focus on maintaining their own power and profits. Using Searle’s framework, we can break down this transformation as follows:

1. Collective Intentionality: Shifting Shared Goals

Original Mission vs. Evolved Agendas:
Initially, these systems were created with clear, socially beneficial goals:

• Healthcare: To care for patients and promote public health.
• Automobile Industry: To provide mobility and economic growth.
• Military: To defend national security.
• Government: To serve and manage public interests.

However, over time the collective intentionality — the shared beliefs and goals — shifts. Influential groups (such as corporate leaders, lobbyists, and political elites) gradually reorient the mission. Rather than focusing on public welfare, the focus shifts to metrics that guarantee continued profitability and institutional survival. For example:

• Automobile Industry: Instead of fostering public transportation that might reduce individual car ownership, the industry and its supporters promote policies that entrench personal vehicle usage.
• Healthcare: Rather than primarily focusing on patient outcomes, the system evolves into one where maximizing billable services becomes the central objective.
• Military: The emphasis shifts from cost-effective defense to the development of high-tech, expensive weaponry that supports a large defense budget and the interests of defense contractors.

2. Institutional Facts and Status Functions: Redefining Success

The Role of Institutional Facts:
According to Searle, institutional facts are realities that exist only because we collectively agree to give them a certain status. Over time, the criteria by which success is measured in these industries become institutionalized:

• Healthcare: What once was measured by improved public health now becomes the number of procedures performed or the volume of billable services. The metric transforms into an institutional fact that drives behavior.
• Automobile Industry: Vehicle sales, miles driven, and personal vehicle ownership become the accepted indicators of success, sidelining investments in public transportation.
• Military: High spending on advanced technology and expensive systems is institutionalized as the marker of national strength — even when it does not directly translate to more effective defense.

Goodhart’s Law in Action:
When these proxy metrics become targets, they no longer serve their original purpose. For instance, if healthcare providers are rewarded based on the quantity of procedures rather than patient outcomes, the system shifts its focus to generating revenue rather than care. The measure, once a proxy for quality care, is now distorted to serve profit motives. This is a textbook application of Goodhart’s Law: the target metric starts to drive behavior in ways that diverge from the original mission.

3. Language and Constitutive Rules: Crafting a Self-Perpetuating Narrative

The Power of Declarative Language:
In Searle’s framework, language doesn’t just describe reality — it creates it. Legal documents, regulatory texts, and public statements enshrine the new targets:

• Policies and laws reframe public transportation as less viable or desirable, reinforcing the status of personal vehicles.
• In healthcare, jargon and billing codes create a system where “services rendered” become the measure of success, not actual health improvements.
• In the military, declarations about the need for technological superiority embed the notion that expensive weaponry is the best — and perhaps only — way to ensure defense.

Rewriting the Constitutive Rules:
Constitutive rules are the “rules that make the game possible.” When these rules are rewritten — explicitly or implicitly — to favor profit and self-preservation, the system’s identity changes:

• Healthcare’s constitutive rules shift from “X counts as effective patient care” to “X counts as a billable procedure.”
• Automobile policies evolve from “X counts as effective public transit” to “X counts as private mobility.”
• Military strategy becomes less about cost-effective defense and more about “X counts as a marker of technological and military might.”

These new rules generate deontic powers (rights and obligations) that compel the system to act in ways that secure its own interests, even if that means straying far from its original public-serving goals.

4. The Convolution of Industrial Complexes

Layered Bureaucracies and Reinforcing Incentives:
As the metrics and rules change, the systems themselves become increasingly convoluted. Each adjustment to align with profit motives or power preservation adds another layer of rules, regulations, and bureaucratic oversight. Over time, this self-reinforcing loop results in:

• Complex regulatory environments: Laws and policies that are designed to protect and justify the new metrics, making reform challenging.
• Entrenched interests: Lobbyists, industry groups, and political elites build their power around these institutional facts, further shifting collective intentionality.
• Feedback loops: As the system becomes more complicated, the very act of measuring success creates incentives that perpetuate the system’s complexity rather than addressing its original social purpose.

Subversion of the Original Mission:
What started as a mission to improve public welfare has now become a self-sustaining enterprise where the primary objective is to maintain the institutional complex. For example:

• In healthcare, the patient is increasingly seen as a revenue source rather than an individual in need of care.
• In the automobile industry, investment in public transit is deprioritized in favor of reinforcing a system that benefits personal vehicle manufacturers.
• In the military, the focus on expensive, technologically advanced weaponry persists even when simpler, more effective methods of defense might be available.

Conclusion

Using Searle’s framework alongside Goodhart’s Law, we see that as industrial complexes evolve, the original mission is often subverted. The collective intentionality that once focused on public good shifts toward preserving and profiting from the system. Institutional facts and status functions are redefined to support these new targets, and language — through constitutive rules — cements a narrative that favors self-perpetuation over genuine public service. This process creates a deeply convoluted system where the metrics meant to ensure quality and efficiency end up incentivizing behaviors that protect the industrial complex itself, rather than addressing the original social needs.