Some critiques of a bureacratic system present it as a binary good or bad. Bureacratic functions are necessary for a complex social system, but often parts or whole departments go bad, as in they go rampant following their own internal logic and damage the host system, either by wasting resources and manpower via wasted opportunity costs or resentment from inhumane treatment, or corrupt the larger system by institionalizing suspicion, fear, and end up choking processes of innovation and creating fracturing.
So what prevents a bureacratic system, especially one involved in security, from going bad, and damaging the host?
Nothing does. This is why we don’t live in a world where everyone lives in a rich country, earning 6 figures doing useful labor. It’s a myth that the reason different countries are poorer or richer merely due to natural resources. Japan is one of the richest nations on the planet, even now, and they have very poor resource supplies.
Varying nations have varying levels of bureaucracy, and this is one of the factors that determines success.
In the United States today, there are ominous signs that the bureaucracy is going bad. A couple of notable elements : a larger percentage of the population are locked into prisons than any other nation on the planet. Yet, big financial scammers merely have to pay a fine, rather than face prison time, if they are protected by wealthy and powerful investment firms.
Ultimately, in the looong term, theoretically, the nations that are going nowhere due to parasitic bureaucracies holding them back will eventually have their governments overthrown or they will be invaded.
However, that’s extreme long term - nations can remain poor, inefficient places pretty much indefinitely.
All sorts of factors (mostly historical ones) are involved in determining whether a country is rich or poor besides its natural resources and the efficiency or otherwise of its bureaucracies. To imply that the latter factor is the major determinant of national wealth is, frankly, ludicrous. Britain is not richer than Botswana because its civil service is better organized.
And, by the way, governments are not the only institutions that have bureaucracies. In fact, of necessity, all large institutions do, most certainly including for-profit capitalistic corporations. (And yes, one, but only one, of the factors determining their profitability and other aspects of their success will be the efficiency of their bureaucracy.)
How are either of those unfortunate facts the fault of the bureaucracy of the United States, as opposed to … oooh, lets say its politics?
I suppose you are right, technically, in both examples the bureaucrats did their jobs.
The cops did their jobs in catching the criminals, it wasn’t their fault that politicians wrote ridiculous sentencing laws for some crimes. The prisons are doing their jobs in keeping the criminals in them, even if many of them are being locked up for too long.
In the financial crimes case, it’s not the FTC’s fault that the court system is so rigged that the best attorneys money can buy can jam it for years. This is why the government will accept massive fines rather than prison time - they would rather take a sure thing immediately, instead of fighting against the kind of legal defenses the executives of the financial scamming firms can muster.
This is ultimately what bureaucracies are like, however. No-one is responsible for anything, and everyone is doing their jobs.
You can argue against this in several ways.
One, you can argue that some people were badly hurt. Lehman Brothers was forced to dissolve, e.g. Nor are fines simply not punishment; Goldman Sachs just was levied a $13 billion fine, which isn’t chump change.
Second, you can argue that the political system does work, since laws against various forms of financial misbehavior have been in place for most of the history of our country. They may not be adequate or change as fast as you would like, but we have regulations and regulations do work often in ways we like.
Third, you can argue that you are providing no definition for bureaucracy beyond something that you don’t like. You’re also providing no definition for politics other than something you don’t like.
That’s the main problem with the OP’s question as well. There is no way to separate out bureaucratic behaviors from people’s behaviors. Maybe a different group of better people would eliminate the problems even with the same bureaucratic framework; maybe a changed bureaucratic framework would solve problems even with the same people.
Since you can define bureaucracy to mean anything you want, and you can find bureaucracies in all groups of people, even anarchists, you cannot eliminate them from the system as long as you have multiple numbers of people in the system. You’re right, Habeed, in saying that nothing can be done, but I think for the wrong reasons.
In any case, this is pure GD.
I think I agree with Harpo–moved to Great Debates from General Questions.
samclem, moderator
I need to correct myself. It’s JP Morgan Chase that just made the $13 billion settlement. Sorry.
Sounds like a homework question :dubious: