But bureaucracy is filled with stupid policies, and was filled for centuries. Stupid policies have to expected, frankly. But unlike commercial companies, people don't have anyone else to turn to. That's why, in a special case of a government machine — which is (1) without alternative and (2) error prone — the human sanity check should always be present.
This is the why people who have experience bureaucracy have learned to hate it. It makes even the simplest thing impossible. The more useless people you add to anything, the harder it becomes.
I think you're right. Bureaucracy has become a term of abuse so we tend not to realise that the good stuff can also be bureaucratic (code reviews being an example that springs to mind).
So much this. It gets so bad that at some of these places, there are folks whose real value seems to be in "knowing the right people" in the org to who get certain things done rather than any real technical/managerial skills.
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