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\centerline{\bf An Abridged Collection of Interdisciplinary Laws}

\centerline{\bf Last updated August 22, 1979, by Don Woods}

\law{Kafka's Law}
	In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
\law{Kamin's First Law}All currencies will decrease in value 
and purchasing power over the long
	term, unless they are freely and fully convertable into gold and that
	gold is traded freely without restrictions of any kind.

\law{Kamin's Second Law}
	Threat of capital controls accelerates marginal capital outflows.

\law{Kamin's Third Law}
	Combined total taxation from all levels of government will always
	increase (until the government is replaced by war or revolution).

\law{Kamin's Fourth Law}
	Government inflation is always worse than statistics indicate: central
	bankers are biased toward inflation when the money unit is
	non-convertible, and without gold or
        silver backing.\law{Kamin's Fifth Law} Purchasing power
        of currency is always lost far more rapidly than ever
	regained.  (Those who expect even fluctuations in both directions play
	a losing game.)

\law{Kamin's Sixth Law}
When attempting to predict and forecast macro-economic moves or economic
	legislation by a politician, never be misled by what he says; instead
	watch what he does.

\law{Kamin's Seventh Law}
	Politicians will always inflate when given the opportunity.

\law{Kaplan's Law of the Instrument}
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters
	needs pounding.

\law{Katz's Law}
	Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have
	been exhausted.

\law{Katz's Maxims}
	1) Where are the calculations that go with the calculated risk? 
	2) Inventing is easy for staff outfits.  Stating a problem is much
          harder.  Instead of stating problems, people like to pass out half-
          accurate statements together with half-available solutions which they
          can't finish and which they want you to finish.
3) Every organization is self-perpetuating.  Don't ever ask an outfit to
	   justify itself, or you'll be covered with facts, figures, and fancy.
   The criterion should rather be, "What will happen if the outfit stops
	   doing what it's doing?"  The value of an organization is more easily
	   determined this way.
	4) Try to find out who's doing the work, not who's writing about it,
	   controlling it, or summarizing it.
	5) Watch out for formal briefings; they often produce an avalanche (a
	   high-level snow job of massive and overwhelming proportions).
	6) The difficulty of the coordination task often blinds one to the fact
	   that a fully coordinated piece of paper is not supposed to be either
	   the major or the final product of the organization, but it often
	   turns out that way.
	7) Most organizations can't hold more than one idea at a time.  Thus
	   complementary ideas are always regarded as competetive.  Further,
	   like a quantized pendulum, an organization can jump from one extreme
	   to the other, without ever going through the middle.
	8) Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it
	   done, is it being done, or is it something to be done?  Reports are
	   now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense,
	   and pretense.  Watch for novel uses of "contractor grammar", defined
	   by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely
	   perfect future.

\law{Kelley's Law}
	Last guys don't finish nice.

\law{Kelly's Law}	An executive will always return to work  
from lunch early if no one takes him.

\law{Kennedy's Law}
	Excessive official restraints on information are inevitably
	self-defeating and productive of headaches for the officials concerned.

\law{Kent's Law}
	The only way a reporter should look at a politician is down.

\law{Kerr-Martin Law}
	1) In dealing with their OWN problems, faculty members are the most
	   extreme conservatives.
	2) In dealing with OTHER people's problems, they are the world's most
	   extreme liberals.

\law{Kettering's Laws}
	1) If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee
	   working on it.
	2) If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.

\law{Kirkland's Law}
	The usefulness of any meeting is in inverse proportion to the
	attendance.

\law{Kitman's Law}
	On the TV screen, pure drivel tends to drive off ordinary drivel.

\law{Klipstein's Law of Specifications}
	In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.

\law{Klipstein's Laws}
   Applied to General Engineering:
	 1) A patent application will be preceded by one week by a similar
	    application made by an independent worker.
	 2) Firmness of delivery dates is inversely proportional to the
	    tightness of the schedule.
	 3) Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
	    Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
	 4) Any wire cut to length will be too short.

\law{Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy}Everything you read 
        in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that
	rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

\law{Knowles's Law of Legislative Deliberation}
	The length of debate varies inversely with the complexity of the issue.
   Corollary:	When the issue is trivial, 
        and everyone understands it, debate is almost
	interminable.

\law{Kohn's Second Law}
	Any experiment is reproducible until another laboratory tries to repeat
	it.

\law{Koppett's Law}
	Whatever creates the greatest inconvenience for the largest number must
	happen.

\law{KristSol's Law}
	Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin
	when you get what you want.

\bye