Bureaucracy As A Wonder of the World.

Vox Popoli posted a hilarious entry on a national treasure, and with my day as it has been, I sat here and giggled insanely for about 10 minutes. Helplessly. Why?

Because today on the news, I heard about the attempts to restructure the United Nations. The U.N. is worse than the military; they may need to add letters to the alphabet just to squeeze in a few more acronyms. Heard about Y2K? Expect to hear about A2S - Alphabet too short - from the U.N. I wish them luck, of course, but until I can bumble into a U.N. meeting and say, "Sorry, I think you're all being stupid", I don't think the U.N. will be effective. For that matter, there's the governmental issues in every country as well.

I heard George W. Bush say that he doesn't pay attention to polls - saying, basically, that he has never followed polls and never will. What Osama's buddy, George, was talking about was that he depends on people he decides are worthy to tell him what's going on.

Effectively, these elected people hire hand puppets who tell them what they want to hear. When politicians are trying to get elected, nobody looks at the people they choose for various jobs - they look at the polished white teeth, the mandatory baby-kiss count, and whether they might support the voter's interests. Hard, cold facts.¹

Bureaucrats abound - in fact, they are out of control. College seems to churn out bureaucrats at an alarming rate, replacing common sense with 'processes', and keeping things nice and bogged down.

And everyone respects the United States, at least to some degree. Even the people who have a hatred for the United States have that strong emotion is because the United States has such a strong bureaucratic system that can hide even the most sensible solutions. And the United States is alone, so I have to challenges Vox's call that Bureaucracy is a national treasure.

I say Bureaucracy is one of the Wonders of the World. And the answer when Bureaucracy fails? More bureaucracy.

When you find yourself in a hole, you're supposed to stop digging.

And the developing nations? Their bureaucrats won't be happy until they have attained the same level of idiocy.

To every department,
churn, churn, churn
Send out a memo,
churn, churn, churn
Establish a process,
churn, churn, churn
Remove common sense,
churn, churn, churn...

¹ Don't get me wrong. I'm sure George as a nice guy to play golf with, have a few drinks with, that sort of thing - but he's certainly not doing too hot in the 'hiring the right people' department, or the 'being friendly to governments we didn't install' department, or... well, you get the idea. But I'll drink a beer with him anytime. It would be amusing. George, if you get this note, we can hang out sometime and shoot some 9-ball. But please, please, stop running the United States and trying to run the world. I'll buy the first round if you do that.