Innovation is a fashionable buzzword bandied about by anti-bureaucrats these days. Don’t be deceived. The Standard Blue Book of Bureaucratic Procedures and Practices (22nd ed., 1986) begins with bureaucratic wisdom from about 2300 years ago:
What has been is what will be
and what has been done is what will be done
and there is nothing new under the sun
Innovation is unimportant. The challenge with any new piece of bureaucratic work is to figure out what past work it’s like. Then you do is what has been done. Say you have a problem with the Internet’s operating system. Yup, that’s like that problem we fixed with the file system in the TRS-80. Add an exception check and an extra rewrite module. Have you heard about the Go programming language and node.js? They’ve just variants on COBOL. A smartphone is a kind of telephone that persons use mainly to do things other than talk with people. It all makes sense when you understand common law and wisdom: there is nothing new under the sun.
In other bureaucrat issues this month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who received a prestigious Bureaucrat of the Month Award, has announced his retirement. In internal email published on Microsoft’s website, Ballmer stated:
This is a time of important transformation for Microsoft. … Our new organization, which is centered on functions and engineering areas, is right for the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Re-orgs are fundamental achievements of bureaucratic management. Some companies like Amazon foolishly seek to please customers. In his email, Ballmer reiterated again another time for emphasis his bureaucratic focus: “I love this company.”
Researchers at the University of Washington have demonstrated a human brain-to-brain interface. A challenge in running a bureaucracy is to hire and train workers who do exactly what their managers tell them to do. A human brain-to-brain interface could facilitate bureaucratic management by having the manager directly control the brains of subordinates.
Oren Hazi provides an amazing, real-world example of the power of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy isn’t sensational, dramatic, and high-profile. But it grinds on and gets jobs done that couldn’t otherwise be accomplished. Hazi explains:
This is how we lose our rights. Not overnight in one fell swoop, but gradually, after getting worn down again and again, and after hundreds of mini-panic-attacks, and with ever-ratcheting procedural changes that effectively invalidate the assurances and safeguards that we’re given.
Bureaucracy isn’t unimportant, and it isn’t just dull. Your fundamental rights depend on bureaucracy.
That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month’s carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.