Space Colonies

Did anyone besides me think of Douglas Adams when they saw this? In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Adams tells us of a planet which has three groups of people: the scientists, the workers, and the middle managers.  They decide to colonise a distant planet and prepare many, many ships.  they place the middle managers on those ships and send them off, at which point the scientists and workers rejoice and slap hands and don't go anywhere. As is usual with Adams, this colony of middle managers show up later in the story.

When the rejected Golgafrinchans colonize Earth, they hold 573 committee meetings and still don’t manage to discover fire. When Arthur’s alien pal, Ford Prefect, points out that the committee hasn’t made any progress on the wheel, a marketing consultant snipes, “All right, Mr. Wiseguy, you’re so clever, you tell us what color it should be.”