The US Navy and Parkinson's Law

By way of Ace's Overnight Thread (don't read it religiously, so I can post it more), new from CDR Salamander, that the US Navy has reached a point where we have more Admirals than ships:

In World War II, there were 30 Navy ships for every admiral. Now, the Navy has more admirals than ships.

That’s a point not lost on Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner.
“I want to see the Pentagon cut back on some of this “brass creep” both in terms of numbers and some of these perks,” Warner said.

Not long ago, the Navy forced out 3,000 mid-career sailors.
...
... the Pentagon has added admirals and generals. There are now nearly a thousand. Many of those top officers are surrounded with entourages including chauffeurs, chefs and executive aids. Top flag officers have private jets always at the ready. They live in sometimes palatial homes and frequently travel in motorcades. Former Democratic Senator Jim Webb asked the Pentagon why the Air Force has more four-star generals than the Army, even though the Army has almost twice the manpower. Across all service branches, Warner said, the number of people at the bottom has shrunk while the number of generals and admirals has swelled.

Which in turn reminded me of the C. Northcote Parkinson's classic example of the growth of bureaucracy at the expense of the mission in the British Navy in Parkinson's Law.

Parkinson's barbs were directed first and foremost at government institutions—he cited the example of the British navy where the number of admiralty officials increased by 78% between 1914 and 1928, a time when the number of ships fell by 67% and the number of officers and men by 31%. But they applied almost equally well to private industry, which was at the time bloated after decades spent adding layers and layers of managerial bureaucracy.

Gary Hamel (see article) commented more than 40 years after the book was written: “Yes, I know that bureaucracy is dead … we're not slaves to our work, we've been liberated … right? Well then, why does a rereading of ‘Parkinson's Law', written in 1958 at the apex of corporate bureaucracy, still ring true?”

More ships or less admirals, that is the question.