Bureaucracy Kills

"A bureaucracy is designed to maximize the distance between
a decision-maker and the risks of the decision."
— Nassim Taleb

Hard work has never killed anyone but Bureaucracy surely does. The Englishmen left several legacies at various shores they withdrew, and also terms like the 'Missionary position' which best described what they did to the native lands they occupied. The made for the industrial age system, the Bureaucracy, seems the most potent of it all - thriving to this day in all its glory.

This legacy of the Victorian age; Hierarchy & (outdated) rule conformist system was supposed to run a Govt machinery on the predictable lines of the conveyor belt based, coal steam fired industry at the turn of the 19th Century. 

That this system can fly in the face of common sense & logic has been documented many a times. In India the system is well entrenched & all pervasive. It was surprising to see this system still calling shots in an advanced economy like the United states.

Take this instance of this American whiz kid who gets turned down at a science fair for some dimwitted rule that bars a student from participating in one too many state fairs. No matter even if he has potentially the solution that mankind is looking for the future. In the Mecca of free market forces, the Bureaucracy still has the audacity to contain a potentially revolutionary solution that could transform society, from potential investors.

At a different level & location, I was involved with this Govt dept trying to seek out some information under RTI about its functioning recently.  Though I asked information about one specific division, the typical bureaucracy shot me back  letters from 4 of its sub divisions, each asking me to cough up  money ostensibly as documentation charges for its respective jurisdictions. And when I do that, I realized I had  to run pillar-to-post at each of the 4 subdivision offices for the required information. 

This same information could have been aggregated at the office of the Public information officer (PIO) which accepted my application in the first place.

You gotta hand it over to these people who framed & implemented these rules.