Creating government bureaucracy should definitely be avoided. We're stuck with inherently-complex problem domains of global climate and large-scale information manipulation, though.
There is a good reason for complex bureaucracy. Nobody likes the time it takes and other bad points, but it exists to ensure things are done right so people don't die as we make the same mistake again. Often we have too much and so it prevents good and useful things, but there is a reason and all talk of eliminating it needs to be about the tradeoffs
I don't think bureaucracy is bad per se -- it's an inevitable development in large organizations. Or rather, not inevitable, but better than the alternatives. Bureaucracy, with its attendant paperwork, procedures, and audit trails, retards the growth of personal fiefdoms and makes individual parts of a larger organization behave more like each other. It also retards forward progress, but I think that's part of the cost of having a large organization. Big ships are slow to turn.
Bureaucracy destroys - regulation is useful, if applied effectively, however the ever growing bureaucracy, and laziness of average people tends to happen without constant pressure or growth. Working as a programmer in Government has made me realize this.
There’s a difference between sprawling bureaucracy and necessary bureaucracy. Are you really suggesting that all bureaucracy is inherently bad and defaults to wasteful sprawl?
I disagree. Bureaucracy is inherently a job of managing people, in all their imperfect emotional people-like glory. Bureaucrats don't just put numbers into a spreadsheet and get out an answer, they balance the needs and wants of competing stakeholders to allow society to function effectively a collective.
I agree with your sentiment but argue that rather than harming productivity, bureaucracy harms autonomy. This can cut both ways. On one hand, having a clear cut process is often a boon.
I'd rather they not institutionalize this. More bureaucracy isn't going to be meaningful if this is the model, the bureaucracy will just exist to whitewash this stuff in the future.
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