Have you ever heard the phrase, the purpose of a system is what it does?
Do you know the origin of this phrase? Do you know its meaning?
And do you know how it can be used to explain current events?
If so, great. Have a great day. I have nothing to teach you. If not, you're in luck.
I'm going to tell you about this phrase, where it comes from,
what it means, and how to use it.
And by the end of today's episode, you're going to understand how the purpose
of a system is what it does, can be used to explain current events, including the Iran War.
Are you ready? Let's dig in.
The important thing to realize about systems is how they are controlled.
And we must get rid of any notion straight away that control is something imposed
on the system from outside. It has to be built into it.
Now you saw me operate this governor just now and noticed how the engine slowed down.
Let's see how the mechanism works.
Suppose the engine is racing, then the governor flies open like that.
You see it lifting here, transmitting the message along here,
lifting that cam up here, and then shutting off a valve there.
That is built into the system. It's called feedback, and feedback is ubiquitous in control systems.
Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to another edition of the Corbett Report.
I'm James Corbett of CorbettReport.com, coming to you, as always,
from the sunny climes of western Japan, here in April of 2026 with episode 499
of the Corbett Report podcast, The Purpose of a System is What It Does.
So who was that man in that intriguing little clip that we just saw?
Well, that was Stafford Beer. And I imagine there is probably some subsection
of the audience who is already familiar with Stafford Beer and his work.
But if not, I will simply intrigue you with the idea that Stafford Beer is certainly
someone who would be deserving of his own podcast deep dive,
and not because I think his life's work or thought is worthy of veneration,
but because it is worthy of dissection.
Namely, because Stafford Beer was a Malthusian limits to growth doomer,
he was a technocrat, he was a socialist, more to the point he was a cybernetician,
and his work provides a very interesting insight into the development of the
technocratic idea, which hopefully my audience is familiar with and which started
in the 1920s slash 1930s,
but the development of that idea in the late 20th century and the form that
it took to develop, well,
cybernetics, which is probably something that is of relevance to all of us and
that we should all know more about.
So as I say, I will leave my teaser introduction of Stafford Beer there with
the promise that I think we will look
further into him in the future. And just as one cookie crumb along the trail
to get you interested in that, I will provide you in the spirit of the Solutions Watch on magic words.
I will provide you the magic words that will unlock at least one intriguing
part of the Stafford Beer story. That is Project Cybersyn.
Cyber S-Y-N. Project Cybersyn.
Just start by looking that up and seeing what you mind on that cookie crumb trail.
But today we're not going to talk about Stafford Beer's life work.
We're going to talk about one specific aphorism with which he is associated.
And that aphorism, from what I understand, came from a number of works that
he had written over the years and number of lectures that he has given over the years.
But we'll take this from Diagnosing the System for Organizations,
a book that you can get up on archive.org.
It is there and available and was published by John Wiley & Sons, copyright 1985.
And if you, well, I mean, read this book's to your heart content if you so desire,
but let's cut to the chase and get down to page 99, on which the aphorism appears.
So once we actually get to page 99, Brock, Jeopardy theme music, please.
And here we are. Exactly. So on page 99 of this book, Stafford Beer writes,
a good observer will impute the purpose of the system from its actions and thus
from the resultant state.
So what is a system? What does it do?
Well, let's look at what it does and then what results from that.
And that is what the system actually is about.
So hence the key aphorism, the purpose of a system is what it does.
And then that is followed up by this incredibly important point.
There is, after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to
do what it consistently fails to do.
That seems so astoundingly obvious that it shouldn't need to be said, and yet it does.
Why is that? It's because people are naturally inclined, or at any rate have
certainly been taught, But to listen to rhetoric and explanation and excuses about,
oh, this system has been designed to dot, dot, dot,
but, oh, it kind of failed here.
Oh, it didn't quite live up to that here. And this is what you get.
And unfortunately, that is the way that so many systems tend to work,
which is why, as he goes on to observe, this produces a lot of cognitive dissonance.
When somebody is telling you the system is actually for this,
and yet it produces that.
What is going on here? This might be very abstract for those who are used to
dealing with cybernetics and systems research and management of the businesses
and humans and everything else.
You might be already familiar with this language and what it means,
but let's put it in something tangible.
I have invented this doohickey, this complex doohickey system that when you
press upon the lever so for, say, 10 minutes a day,
you will balance your neural chakra and unfung your shui,
and that will allow you to earn more money,
have more power and influence, achieve your dreams and cure your toenail fungus,
but only if you press it like this for 10 minutes a day every day.
Sure, sold. How much? $10,000. And you can have this amazing doohickey that I've invented.
Fast forward 10 years later, and what has this doohickey and pressing on it
actually produced? Well, nothing.
It has changed absolutely nothing in my daily life. I haven't been able to regrow
my hair or any of the other things that the snake oil salesman who sold me that doohickey promised.
So what was the actual purpose of this doohickey? What did it actually do?
Well, it separated me from my money. And that was the actual purpose of the doohickey all along.
The purpose of the system is what it does.
And that is an incredibly simple yet incredibly powerful observation that we
can use to help explain what is actually happening in reality and strip it from
all of the rhetoric that surrounds the platitudes,
the political platitudes and pieties that surround systems that are presented to us.
Once again, I think this is probably best demonstrated through concrete examples.
So let's turn from the doohickey example to a very real example with which we are all familiar.
Of course, one of the things that the government claims to do for us is to provide
us with an education system.
In fact, so thoroughly has this been
indoctrinated into the population that we need the education system provided
by the state that it has become almost literally unthinkable for the average
person to imagine a world before
the government was providing such an education system to its citizens.
How could education function if it was not being provided to us in this wonderful education system?
And of course, surrounding the education system, we have all of the wonderful
rhetoric about how this is going to develop more responsible citizens and equip
young adults for the world of tomorrow, etc.
And all of the other things that we are told about the education system.
But the purpose of a system is what it does.
So what is the actual resultant state of the education system as it exists?
A noticeable decline. Teachers sharing the everyday things students can't do
for themselves anymore.
They can't read, write, or spell and don't care.
This is coming from BuzzFeed, who apparently posted up an article,
25 teachers sharing the basic things students apparently can't do themselves
anymore. And once that story hit, even more people started to pile on.
In response to that, I teach 3K.
These are three and four year olds, and most of our kids cannot put a jacket on at all.
They won't even try. They start throwing tantrums before even attempting,
saying they can't do it. It's too hard.
The majority of students struggle to read a clock unless it's digital.
Kids know they will pass no matter how unqualified, ill-equipped,
and unprepared they are. They come to school with the attitude,
I won't do the work, and you can't make me.
Sad to say, we can't. That's why I quit teaching.
Call me a coward. I blame it all. No child left behind. It's always those Republicans.
I've been shocked by the number of second and third graders who can't tie their shoes.
I also have fourth graders who can't write their first and last names.
It's really scary to think a kid can get to fourth grade without anyone raising
an alarm about their inability to write their full name.
I've been teaching high school English for only seven years now,
and the post-COVID lockdown emotional landscape is rough.
Students are using AI to think for them, write for them, and summarize any readings
for them that are longer than a paragraph.
We've put technology in every classroom, but kids don't understand how to use it.
Now that, as I hope my listeners are aware, was a clip from New World Next Week, episode 623.
Ehrlich contributes to the depopulation agenda in which James Evan Pilato there
in New Mexico is reporting on the failure of the American education system to
actually educate children. But is it a failure?
Think, for example, about the rationalization that, as Pilato,
I think, rightly pointed out there, is given in this case.
Oh, yes, the education system is, of course, meant to elevate and educate and
enlighten and inspire children, but it's failing because, because why?
Because of insufficient funding or insufficient resources or those resources
have been misallocated or applied in the wrong way.
No, what we need is better people with good intentions to come along and reform
the system in the right way in order to produce the real desired results.
Because as we all know, of course, the education system is about educating children.
But let's use POSIWID. The purpose of a system is what it does.
Sometimes referred to by its acronym, POSIWID.
Well, in this case, well, let's strip it of the rhetoric. Let's strip it of the rationalization.
Let's overcome our cognitive dissonance and let's look plainly at what the system does.
It is dumbing down children.
Therefore, the purpose of the education system, at least the American education
system as it exists today, is to dumb down children.
Now, this will not come as a surprise to those who have, for example,
read Charlotte Izerbitz, the deliberate dumbing down of America,
or John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction,
A School Teacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling,
or for those Those who have seen how big oil conquered the world and learned
the history of the Rockefeller funded modern American education system.
That is the power and the genius of this POSIWID insight.
It doesn't matter what the intentions of anyone in this system are.
We can, and I have, pointed to the intentions of these people to deliberately
dumb down children in this miseducation system.
But there are those suffering from cognitive dissonance who will not be able
to understand or accept that the purpose of the system is not what the designers
say it is. So let's simply take that criterion.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
It is dumbing down children. Therefore, the purpose of the education system
is to dumb down children.
It's a very effective and powerful way of cutting through the BS and arriving
at the reality underneath.
I think this is kind of fun. So let's do it again.
Let's take a look at a different example. In this case, any system will do.
Let's take a look at the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee.
What is the purpose of the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee? What is the purpose of that system?
Well, let's look specifically at the Peace Prize. We are told that the Nobel
Peace Prize is to be an award that is to be given to the person or persons responsible
for having done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations,
the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
And the implication is that the reason for awarding such a prize is to promote
such peaceful activities and endeavors and promote peace in the world.
But, pause you with. So let's ask, what is the real purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize? Oh.
Hello. Hello. Yes. Yes. Am I talking to Maria Corina Machado?
Yes, this is Maria Corina. Yes, Maria Corina.
My name is Christian Bergarpyken.
I am the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
And I'm calling to inform you that in a few minutes it shall be announced here
at the Nobel Institute that you will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025.
Oh, my God. The United States just attacked Venezuela's capital,
hitting military facilities in the country.
President Trump ordered this operation.
There were multiple explosions in Caracas starting at around 2 a.m.
Local time. You can see the video here coming in. It shows low-flying aircraft in the city.
This is the first U.S. military attack within the country.
. The purpose of a system is what it does.
Ergo, the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize is to give political cover to warmongers.
Now, once again, this will not be news to people who are familiar with the history of this subject.
People who, for example, remember my work on this subject, like episode 484
of The Corbett Report podcast on the Nobel War Prize Strikes Again, in which I documented,
for example, how last year's Nobel Peace Prize and the awarding of that to Maria
Corina Machado was part of a campaign to consolidate public support amongst the peace-loving,
EU neoliberal jet set for a campaign of demonization of the Maduro government
that directly led to the military intervention or how it was used back in 2009, for example,
when it was awarded to Barack Obama to give political cover to him for his campaign
to not only continue the Bush era war of terror, but to greatly expand that campaign,
expand the bombing campaign into nine different countries,
expand the drone warfare that became an essential part of the War of Terror.
Normalizing the concept of the presidential kill list,
stripping Americans of their civil rights and protections, surging in Afghanistan,
fomenting the rise of ISIS, etc., etc., and other historical examples like,
for example, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger for a
war that he did not end and that was still ongoing when the prize was awarded, etc.
But again, as I say, this will not be news to people who have been paying attention to the subject.
But even if you have not been paying attention to the subject,
you do not have to think about the rhetoric that surrounds the Nobel Peace Prize
and what it is designed to do or what its original creator or its current prize
committee members say it is designed to do.
No, we look at what it does and we reason from there.
All right. Again, this is an incredibly valuable heuristic. And I think you
understand now the power of POSIWID.
So let's continue applying it. But now let's start to get into the pressing
political matters of our day,
things that pertain to systems that have been created in recent times in order
to facilitate certain events that are ongoing.
And let's ask a very interesting question.
What is the purpose of MAGA?
Because just take a look here, MAGA, GOP, view of Trump, approve 100%,
100%. If you are a member of MAGA and the GOP, you approve of Donald John Trump.
Zero percent say that they disapprove. You don't have to be a mathematical genius
to know you can't go higher than 100%.
He is the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Now, there are some Republicans who disapprove
of Donald John Trump, but they are not members of the Make America Great Again movement.
The bottom line is this. If you are a member of MAGA, you approve of Donald Trump.
A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats
from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
There are some people who are just waking up to reality, who are starting to
ponder whether or not MAGA is failing.
MAGA has not been successful, these people think, because I believed MAGA was
this thing, but it has become this other thing.
However, they have fallen into a trap. They believe that the purpose of a system
is what it is called, or, at best, the purpose of a system is what its progenitor
has said that that purpose is.
Ergo, MAGA is make America great again, whatever one makes of that unwieldy phrase.
Yes, I believe in making America great again,
and I interpret that in my own way exactly as people in 2008 interpreted hope
and change and have believed in it and wished it were so and are starting to wonder how that failed.
But MAGA did not fail. In fact, it has been remarkably successful in doing what MAGA does.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
So what is the purpose of MAGA? It is to generate support for the war on Iran.
Now, that is not the only purpose of this system, because MAGA has done many things.
Generating support amongst a portion of the public who even a few months ago
would have been vociferously opposed to the idea of foreign intervention and
meddling in the Middle East is not something to sneeze at.
So that is one of the purposes of MAGA. There are others.
For example, another purpose of MAGA is demonstrably to cover up the Epstein files.
Another purpose of MAGA is to expand American government involvement in the
AI industry through things like Project Stargate.
Another purpose of MAGA is to deploy more Pentagon PsyOps warriors on Twitter
in order to sway public opinion.
Another purpose of MAGA is to extend warrantless surveillance through the extension of the FISA Act.
Another purpose of MAGA is to increase the military budget to record levels
and in so doing to increase the fortunes of teal-connected military industrial
contractors like Palantir and Anduril, etc, etc.
There are a number of things that we could point to as purposes of the system
that is MAGA, but it would be an incorrect assessment, given all of the foregoing,
to say that MAGA is failing.
No, MAGA is doing precisely what MAGA does. It is what it does,
and it is generating support for these various things. So.
Now that we have this very valuable heuristic, let's apply it to the pressing
political question of the moment.
The system that we are all seeing unfolding before our very eyes is the Iran war.
Whatever that is and however it eventuated and whatever people are saying it
is about, how about if we apply this heuristic?
The purpose of a system is what it does, POSIWID. So, what is the purpose of the Iran war?
It's being called the world's most dangerous toll booth.
The only tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz are being forced into
a new route controlled by Iran, with some charged millions of dollars to transit.
It's sort of been dubbed the Tehran toll booth. That's according to data from
Lloyd's List Intelligence, a maritime firm shared with NBC News.
Before the war, around 110 ships passed the strait each day.
Now, it's 10 ships or fewer.
Now, I don't need to tell you, but I'll tell you anyway, that,
of course, the events that are unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz are still unfolding
and nothing has been decided yet.
And undoubtedly, there will be twists and turns along the way.
But if we were to take a look at the situation right now and ask,
well, what is the system doing, the system of the Iran war?
It is producing a toll or a blockade
or a disruption of the passage of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
That is what it is doing right now. So we have gone from a state where there
was a free flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to a state in which
there is a trickle of traffic that is either being blockaded and or told in various ways.
And so we can use POSIWID.
Purpose of the system is what it does. The purpose of the Iran war is to create
a toll of some sort or disruption of some sort on the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, once you have determined the actual purpose of a system,
there are second order questions that you can then start to take a look at.
You could ask the why question.
Well, then why? Why would anyone design a system to impose blockades or tolls
or otherwise disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz?
One might ask. It doesn't necessarily, of course, logically follow that because
a system is doing that thing, that it was designed to do that thing.
In fact, part of the beauty of POSIWID is that we can completely and totally
take the intentions out of our analysis of a system because the intentions do
not matter. The question is, what does it do?
But in this case, I think that there is intentionality behind this situation.
I think that the Iran war has been designed to create this disruption of traffic.
And if you want to know why I think that and who stands to benefit from this
disruption of traffic, I would exhort you to take a look at some of my recent work on this subject.
For example, episode 495 of The Corbett Report podcast on this is the real endgame in Iran.
And also a recent conversation that I had with Ryan Christian on the last American vagabond,
where we talked about the great Iran reset and go
into more of the question of
why such a disruption would be in the interests of certain power players at
the geopolitical table and those who are interested in starting a new world
order predicated on a new monetary paradigm and the disruption and or the extension
of the petrodollar, etc.
Those are some very valuable questions to be asking and to be looking into right now.
And I suggest that those two links, which will be in the transcript for today's
episode, will start to send you along that path.
But, like every good professor, this is the point at which I turn the lesson
over to the students and invite your participation in this exercise.
I think, I would like to think I have adequately demonstrated the utility of
POSIWID as a heuristic for actually cutting through the BS, cutting through
the propaganda, cutting through the rhetoric that surrounds every system.
Oh, well, it's designed to do this and it should act this way and we intend
for it to be like this. does not matter.
No, the purpose of a system is what it does. So now we can evaluate what does
the system do in order to understand the purpose of that system.
The purpose of the system is predicated on the resultant state of that system.
Again, a deceptively simple insight, but one that has power,
genuine power, in being able to cut through all of the BS and get to reality underneath.
So I can, off the top of my head, think of dozens of ways in which this POSIWID
heuristic can be applied to various questions that might arise when we look
at the world around us and start to contemplate the systems around us.
You might ask, for example, what is the purpose of the war on drugs?
Well, clearly the purpose of the war on drugs is to make more people addicted
to drugs and to increase the prison incarceration rates and to ensure more people
are in the prison system.
That is what the system does. That is what it is for.
All right. What is the purpose of AI and the chatbot takeover?
Clearly, again, demonstrably, the purpose of this is to make people stupider,
more intellectually lazy, and more dependent on their digital devices.
That is happening. That is what it does. That is what it is for.
What is the purpose of processed foods? It is demonstrably not to enrich in
our lives, not to make us feel better or to make us healthier.
No, it is precisely the opposite. The purpose of the processed food industry
is to make people fatter, sicker, and lazier.
So again, it is a great way of really seeing through all of the illusion and
getting to the base reality of a thing.
And I will invite the participation of all of those in the Corporate Report audience.
What are some other ideas that occur to you of how you could apply POSIWID to
understand what something is really for, not what people say it is for.
I think it's an interesting and valuable intellectual exercise that I think
will sharpen people's critical faculties, generally speaking.
It is good to frame things in
this way to gain a more penetrating insight into what things really are.
But I'll leave you today on this particular note.
This question, what is the purpose of the Corbett Report?
Or alternatively, what is the purpose of any particular piece of media that you're consuming?
But let's ask that in the context of the Corbett Report.
What does the Corbett Report do? Does it inform you?
Does it enrich your life in any way? Does it actually produce a better understanding
of the world that you can use to better navigate yourself in that world or to
understand various events?
Does it teach you? Does it enlighten
you? Does it inform you about things that you did not know about?
If the answer is no, then the purpose of a system is what it does.
I don't want any part of that. I would say that at that time,
when you come to that conclusion, you should get rid of The Corbett Report
or any other piece of media that is similarly not enlightening you,
not empowering you, not motivating you, not inspiring you, not informing you,
not improving your life in any measurable way.
However, if the answer is yes, if The Corbett Report does teach you new things,
if it does enlighten you in any way, if it does inform you, if it does empower
you, motivate you, inspire you.
Then I would say it is a very good thing, Posse would, because that is my intention
for The Corbett Report.
And it would be very gratifying to hear that that is what it is doing,
because that is the purpose of a system, ultimately.
So if The Corbett Report does in any way entertain, inform,
enlighten, inspire, motivate, empower you, then I would humbly ask if you could support this work.
It wouldn't exist without people out there supporting this work.
So if you are not a Corbett Report member, I would ask if you could become one.
I would very much appreciate that support. And if you can't afford to become
one for $3 a month or more, then I would simply ask if you could spread this information to others.
I think that would be a very, very productive way to use this information,
and I hope that it is valuable to you.
Now, having said all of that, I would like to thank you all for participating
in today's exploration and hopefully, hopefully, learning something new or a
different way of looking at the world.
And as always, I'm very much interested in and hoping for your feedback at corbettreport.com/posiwid,
P-O-S-I-W-I-D,
where you will be able to not only access the full, complete,
hyperlinked transcript of today's podcast,
but also converse with others in The Corbett Report audience and share your
insights into how the POSIWID heuristic can give you insight into various questions
and the question of the purpose of various systems.
But I think we will leave today's exploration there. Thank you for investing
your mind time in today's episode.
I'm James Corbett of corbettreport.com. Looking forward to talking to you
again in the very near future.
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