# Why does (insert interaction with bureaucracy) have to be so hard? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 13, 2019, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-insert-interaction-with-bureaucracy-have-to-be-so-hard/840156 "2019-09-13T07:14:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2019, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-insert-interaction-with-bureaucracy-have-to-be-so-hard/840156/21 "2019-09-14T20:57:23Z")
> [@pullin](#): > > Once formed, any bureaucracy begins evolving toward a single purpose: Increasing the power and wealth of the bureaucracy’s members, and decreasing their responsibility, accountability and effort. There are no exceptions. > > The longer a bureaucracy has been in operation, the more progress it will have made toward these goals, and the less responsive and useful it will become to the users and purpose for which it was originally formed. Ridiculous. In fact, in many ways “Bureaucracies” (you may read that as “systems administered by public entities, which are vital to the functioning of a civil society”) are becoming more responsive all the time. Remember when you could renew your license plates online back in the 80’s? Or back in 2000 when you city’s Parks Department had a Facebook page and Twitter account where anybody could register a concern publicly? And P+R had a social media liason? No, because this things didn’t exist. Remember back in the 90’s when you needed a copy of an accident report from your local police department, and you had to wait a week for them to dig up the paper from an archive and make you copies? Yep. And countless other examples. Is like to hear your solution to replace bureaucracies. For the record, my degree is in Public Administration. When I started, it was kind of funny because I was a small government libertarian - leaning conservative. The two things that changed my outlook on public institutions were my getting an actual education in them, and working in them. Eta: your post would be accurate if you replaced “Bureaucracy” with “business”. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-insert-interaction-with-bureaucracy-have-to-be-so-hard/840156/22 "2019-09-20T07:17:45Z")
It wasn’t the bureaucracy, it was a flippin’ bureaucrat who thought she knew the RULES, except she didn’t. After the debacle last week and realizing what a damned chore it was going to be to get the suppoedly necessary docs, I read through the ‘Accepted Identity Documents’ list and found nothing about having to prove a previous identity. It would only be needed if any ID was in a different name, but all my stuff is in the same name. Went back armed with this info, and the same woman from last week dug her heels in…until finally a supervisor, hearing me getting a bit argumentative, came over to investigate. Long story, but I haz a new licence. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-insert-interaction-with-bureaucracy-have-to-be-so-hard/840156/23 "2019-09-20T11:39:30Z")
The purpose of a bureaucracy is to carry out the regulations in a uniform manner. The regulations are designed to achieve a certain goal (mandated by legislation) in a way to prevent people from gaming the system. Complaints about bureaucracy usually boil down to “How dare they not give me special treatment!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-insert-interaction-with-bureaucracy-have-to-be-so-hard/840156.md?page=1)