The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state.
Karl MarxThe ten most dangerous words in the English language are “Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Ronald Reagan
How many of you know just how much of your life is determined by multitudes of nameless, faceless bureaucrats? You might think that the politicians in Washington D.C. have the ultimate authority when it comes to day to day decisions about how the government runs and how it treats its subjects, but if you have any belief in that illusion, you are sadly mistaken. The real power of the government is with the petty bureaucrat, the one you might see from time to time. Think the DMV clerk, the IRS auditor, the tax collector – any one of these individuals has the power, backed by government, to ruin your life at the point of a gun if they so decide.
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume…that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.
H. L. Mencken.
Anyone who has taken an airline flight lately knows exactly what H. L. Mencken’s quote means. You are treated as a suspect from the moment you enter the airport until you get on your plane. And it’s not just airports – has anyone tried to renew their car tags or driver’s license lately? How many different layers of proof is one citizen expected to have anymore? It’s quickly degenerating into the old Soviet question, “Papers, please.” Now with the Real ID Act, it’s going to be even harder to prove who you are without the microchip that’s embedded in most forms of ID today. Mark of the beast, anyone?
A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?
Marcus Tullius Cicero
That quote comes from his writings in early A.D. Rome (click the link to see when – for the purposes of this post, it doesn’t matter). But even though he wrote that quote very early in our civilization’s history, Cicero identified the central problem with bureaucrats and bureaucracies. The people who are attracted to bureaucratic or government jobs know that thay are unsuited for any social success or productive work and it infuriates them, so they want payback. What better way to get payback than to fuck with people who they know are their betters? They relish their jobs because every time they can make someone wait, audit their tax returns, place a lien on their property or in extreme cases cause someone to die, they feel that their revenge is taken.
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
Milton Friedman
No truer statement was ever uttered and if you don’t believe me on this, just fuck with one of these dickheads. They will ensure that to all extent of their government bestowed powers, anything they can do they make your life as hellish as possible, they will do, and make you pay even more of your hard earned money than you do presently. Fuck with them enough, or just be in the wrong situation at the wrong time and they’ll ruin your life…or get you killed.
The threat of people acting in their own enlightened and rational self-interest strikes bureaucrats, politicians and social workers as ominous and dangerous.
W. G. Hill
Having no enlightenment, no rationality and only self interest, bureaucrats see us individuals who want to live our lives without their interference as alien, almost as if a green extraterrestrial had walked into their office. They have no reference for what it is like to live as a person, much less a free individual with hopes and dreams and the means to attain them. And so, we are dangerous. We don’t behave “by the book.” And we have to be controlled. It’s all for our own best interests, isn’t it? Why should anyone be allowed to follow their individual talents and drive for the life they wish to live? That might make someone else feel inferior, just like they do. So we must be at the least controlled, and at the extreme destroyed.
The purpose of bureaucracy is to demolish face-to-face social groups, to break instinctive and emotional social ties and obligations, and to subordinate people to the power of the state. It is cruel, it is wasteful, and it is unjust.
Christopher Chantrill
So now we get to the true purpose of the bureaucracy that surrounds us today. The bureaucracy is impersonal, attracting to its ranks people who have no interpersonal relationships, no social aptitude and inferior abilities. It is intended to splinter free associations among free individuals. It promotes subservience to the state through obstinance, humiliation, propaganda, obfuscation, outright lies and examples of individuals exposed for the most minor of infractions in its medias. It relies on destroying reputations, besmirching integrity, turning social networks away from individuals under its scrutiny, and separating families. It is, in my opinion, the most destructive force that we are exposed to on a daily basis. I’ll take my chances with the Taliban before I will with any bureaucracy I’m liable to be exposed to in my daily life. At least with the Taliban, I know where I stand.
Should we believe self-serving, ever-growing drug enforcement/drug treatment bureaucrats, whose pay and advancement depends on finding more and more people to arrest and “treat”? More Americans die in just one day in prisons, penitentiaries, jails and stockades than have ever died from marijuana throughout history. Who are they protecting? From what?
Dr. Fred Oerther
“Whose pay and advancement depends on finding more and more people to arrest and ‘treat’?” That one statement explains the entire reason for the War on Drugs. And make no mistake, it is a war. But the name is misleading, it’s not about drugs at all, because if they ever succeeded, there would be millions of tax parasites out of work. It is a war to ensure that the parasites continue to get fed and expand. Nothing more, nothing less. How is that working out for Mexico where the government there has just about lost control of their country because of U.S. interventionism? And why, since the U.S. military is supposedly in control in Afghanistan, is their opium crop still being grown and exported? No, it’s not about keeping people from consuming drugs; it’s about ensuring that people continue to consume drugs. Without that demand, the taxpayer trough would soon empty. Can’t have that now, can we?
[I]f we won’t choose to pay the price of liberty, then by default we shall suffer the cost of servitude — whether it be the iron chains of a tyrannical oligarchy or the regulatory chains of unelected, faceless bureaucrats. When we witness our neighbors abused by tyrants, will we skulk away and hope we’re not next? Or will we stand by them and challenge — as freedom-loving Americans — the tyranny of lawless leaders.
Phil Trieb
Anyone reading the quote above already knows the answer. Everyone hopes they’re not next, so they hang their heads and refuse to get involved, even when they know their neighbor is innocent. And there’s a reason why. You WILL be the next target, because the bureaucracy never forgets and definitely never forgives. The iron chains are unnecessary in the society we live in today. Regulatory chains serve the same purpose just as well.
The welfare state that is built upon this conception seems to prove precisely away from the conservative conception of authoritative and personal government, towards a labyrinthine privilege sodden structure of anonymous power, structuring a citizenship that is increasingly reluctant to answer for itself, increasingly parasitic on the dispensations of a bureaucracy towards which it can feel no gratitude.
Roger Scruton
This is the inevitable end of the path that started over a century ago. Look around you. How many of your friends, co-workers or families have their eyes open to what is obviously happening around them? I bet you can count them on one hand. They probably know deep down inside how much has been taken away from them, but for most people it’s easier to stay oblivious and collect their miniscule paycheck or if they’re like one third or more of the population, their government benefits. Watch some TV, drink some beer, play a video game, it’s all good as long as the checks keep coming in.
Bureaucracy is that dreadful state of when more emphasis is placed on the process than the actual resolution of a problem.
William Powell
The problem is that the bureaucracy is entrenched. From Ask.com:
How many government employees are there in the US?
21,292,000.
There are a total of 21,292,000 government employees in the United States as of February 2010. This is according to the Employment Situation Summary published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on March 5, 2010. This number shows an 0.6% increase in the number of US government employees compared to February 2009.
That was in February 2010. I would dare say that with government expansion at the rates they are today, the number approaches 22,000,000. Those are people who are unelected. The huge majority of them are career bureaucrats, with huge incentives to keep their annual pay raises and future pensions. Think they give a damn about you? Think again. These are the people who still have their jobs after each election. Elected officials are a miniscule portion of the government and as such have very little impact on the overall policies that the bureaucracy relies on to preserve its power. Any elected official who tries to initiate reforms is quickly taken care of. Just look at the truth about John F. Kennedy’s assassination and you will see that the bureaucracy has become a monolithic threat to all Americans, no matter how high the elected office.
So I know you are all asking, “What can be done?” My answer is ‘nothing,’ because it would be pure futility to try. The beauty of it is we don’t have to do anything. The bureaucracy has set itself up for the most spectacular fall of any organized group of people since the Soviet Union, if not the Roman Empire. It’s going to be fast, and it’s not going to be pretty. As a matter of fact, just by staying out of their clutches, you can exacerbate the downfall.
I call it “Starving the Beast.” I’ll explain that in more detail in a future article.
Originally published at Veritas Aculeus on April 27, 2011.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
In all periods and countries of the world people love to hate bureaucrats.
Question is, why are they still with us? Can we get rid of them or is there some objective social necessity generating their existence? I would argue, yes there is. A society with traffic lights and public roads obviously requires a pyramid of co-ordination — it’s a structural cost of complexity. And yet social complexity enables many possibilities that would otherwise not exist.
The soul of bureaucracy has nothing to do with petty bureaucrats (“little Hitlers on postage-sized turf”) and all. It has no soul — it is a machine, a social machine, but a machine nonetheless: inexorable, mindless function.
Good article, thanks for writing it. It’s good to see someone defending liberty and smaller government with all the commies and fascists running around this place lately. “That government is best which governs not at all.”
Anyone who has taken an airline flight lately knows exactly what H. L. Mencken’s quote means. You are treated as a suspect from the moment you enter the airport until you get on your plane. And it’s not just airports – has anyone tried to renew their car tags or driver’s license lately? How many different layers of proof is one citizen expected to have anymore? It’s quickly degenerating into the old Soviet question, “Papers, please.” Now with the Real ID Act, it’s going to be even harder to prove who you are without the microchip that’s embedded in most forms of ID today. Mark of the beast, anyone?
I’m glad you wrote this. I agree. I have to renew my driver’s license this summer and I was stunned when I got a letter recently outlining all the documentation I need to find, gather, and bring with me. I’m a citizen after all! But maybe that’s the point. Or maybe it’s just to make my life miserable like you said.
Either way, Great post.
Excellent piece.
Clear, pacate, logic, really true.
For an instant I needed to check if I was on the wrong site.
My driver’s licence is good until 2041. It helps to live in a state with alot of retirees.
I am surprised to see such a pessimistic and static POV on bureaucrats. Women can be alot like bureaucrats when you first approach. PU teaches ways to overcome this. If you don’t like their attitude, change it! They affect you, and you affect them, it’s not one way.
Don’t you always hear that “a person is not his job.” That bureaucrat gets off work at 5 o’clock. He has a life, dreams, maybe a family. You have to make them care. How are you different from the other 300 customers he will help that day?
This is a negative, effeminite way of seeing things that you are promoting. Call it learned helplessness. Use your intellect to understand the system and to do what you want. Why, right now I’m watching a movie where there are no bureaucrats, there is no government around. It’s Jerimiah Johnson, set in the Rocky Mountains, in about 1855.
The problem with bureaucracy is that it is not restricted to the government. Large corporations have an equivalent number of malicious bureaucrats.
Bureaucracy seem to be a stand in for the normal chain of responsibility that you might still still in the fighting side of the armed forces. Do make chains of responsibility work you need to have competent people at each link in the chain. A bureaucracy on the the other hand consistently provides somewhat competent service without having to select people of talent or character. It’s a way of dealing with the crappy generals and insane emperors that most large societies run into.
If your civilization is finding mostly men of character and talent to run things in a responsible manner you don’t need bureaucracy. If the quality of your people is crap, then you need one.
I think honestly most bureaucracy work quite well when first created but tend to be self serving crap holes very quickly. I think the primary issues is civilizations inability to break up a bureaucracy and start over on a periodic basis to reduce crude and waste from the system. The very fact that most bureaucracies tend to last till the very day when the state falls makes them immortal, unchangeable, and un-fixable.
As a former military man, a U.S. Soldier, who has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, I can tell you the military is also one giant bureaucracy in which virtually everything written above applies. This post is long but well worth the read especially for anyone thinking of joining any military in the world. I’ve tried to be as succinct as possible. Some militaries are better than others, and I think the U.S. military is among the best in history. It’s certainly the one I have the most emotions for including love and frustration.
The major differences are these. There does tend to be more comradery than in the civilian sector especially in the combat arms MOS’s( Military Ocupation Specialties), jobs. There is less comradery in the support MOS’s. A unit with more combat arms MOS’s will tend to have more comradery.
The military can legally and in fact get away with screwing it’s military personnell bureaucratically and legally for life more so than the civilian sector can. Once one recieves an Other than Honorable, Bad Conduct or Dishonorable Discharge he will with almost certainty never be able to work directly for the government again although he may be a contractor working for the government. The Dishonorable discharge is the worst one to get with the Bad Conduct as the second worst one to get. Even getting a General Discharge isn’t so good although it isn’t bad. Fortuneately, I got the best one, an Honorable Discharge. My friend wasn’t so fortuneate.
Also don’t forget that the military owns military persons and rules every aspect of their lives because they are in effect an INDENTURED SERVANTS. One is a military person all twent-four hours a day, seven days a week and every day of the year as long as he is in whether he is on duty or off duty. If one retires instead of doing what I did, Estimated Time in Service, he is still owned by the military because he recieves a paycheck from it. The military retiree can be recalled into service, and whatever criminal activity he is accused of off duty, off installation and out of military uniform even in a foreign country can get him court martialled which could lead to execution, imprisonment and forfeiture of all rank, pay and benefits.
The military has all sorts of laws, policies and rules which can result in a non-juidicial punishment, Article 15, or a court martial, a juidicial punishment. Fornication, adultry even if the military person is single or not informing your chain of command that another soldier is violating a rule off duty, off installation and out of uniform could lead to an Article 15 or court martial. I’ve never seen anyone get punished for fornication, but I have for the last two. Even with adultry, not knowing she is the spouse of someone else is no excuse although the deciding authority may show lenient mercy towards you.
Of course on top of all this and more not stated the military can get you to do things like go places you don’t want to go, kill, maim and mutilate people or drive them crazy as well as get you driven crazy, maimed, mutilated or killed.
The train is already way the hell off the track. The question in my view isn’t so much how to derail it as it is how to survive the coming crash, and what to do next.
Frankly I don’t have a clue on either question.
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. ~Ronald Reagan
—————-
And at each step of the way, more bureaucrats are added, courtesy of your tax dollars.
Mike
Ronald Regan:
Aren’t you glad that you learned from Regan to pay your taxes and not expect anything in return? To be frightened animal shivering that you might get something back for all the money they took. No Mastah Regan, No Sir, You don’t wanna no money. Mastah Regan decide which rich people to give it to. That’s better. That’s smart. No money for you, you don’t want it. It should all go to rich people the way God intended.
The word for Ronald Regan is CONservative.
And, Liberal Barack Hussein Obama pleases you?
No?
What do YOU do, when no President from either side of the spectrum pleases you?
The problem with bureaucracy is that it is not restricted to the government. Large corporations have an equivalent number of malicious bureaucrats.
That’s absolutely true. The main difference is that corporations must adapt to meet the demands of their customers, or they go out of business. At least under a profit-AND-loss system.
But the government? If they imprison you for smoking weed or soliciting prostitution, well, there is no customer service department. And the reason why conservatives and liberals seem the same is that all of these goons keep their jobs and power whether the leadership has a D- or an R- next to their name. Firing government drones is next to impossible, thanks to public sector unions (which need to be broken) and the liberal media — everyone wants to cut taxes, but no one wants “cutbacks” that impact “the workers,” “the old,” “the sick,” “the children,” et cetera.
The state of California now requires a thumbprint for a driver’s license. How long until states demand all 10 fingers?
Gorilla – sounds like “tortilla?”
Hey – genius: how do expect Califas to keep out the 40 million beaners wanting FREE State Welfare goodies in your decrepit state.
Any magic Illegal Immigrant detection wands been invented in Silicon Valley recently?
Another one for the pile…
“The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.” – Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Maybe technology offers a partial solution. Phase out the human drones, but do it naturally and painlessly, by keeping the old ones until they retire and not hiring new ones. Replace them with computer automation and simple A.I.s to handle the rubber-stamping and form-filling.
There’s still the broader philosophical question of whether that rubber-stamping and form-filling is even necessary, but at least you reduce the human interaction required. Less opportunities for personal prejudices and vendettas to form. No need for make-work projects to fill the hours to justify the number of peasants in the bureaucratic feudal kingdom; it’s a problem when someone is using an 8 hour day to do 1 hour of real work, but far less so if your mainframe is ticking along at 12% resource usage.
And since most of the work of a department is done by machines, it makes it easier to make cuts in either size or jurisdiction; nobody cares if a machine loses its job, and the handful of humans are too few in number to be worth a fight; can you imagine a public sector union throwing down because, say, 10 people were phased out when a department was eliminated/re-organized/merged ?
Just heard on the news that, here in Ontario, the Hospitals got an exemption from Freedom of Information requests. Wonder what justification the Liberal Premier would use, other than the fact he is hiding massive amounts of waste.
@doclove: Thanks for the post, I’m still up in the air on whether I want to go into the military or not, if I do I’m thinking of doing so as a JAG. Have my own reservations about it, but your overview was great.
@Ryu: This is kinda OT, but I was curious about something you wrote on another article, what is the “true purpose” of black/asian/native/hispanic studies that you mentioned?