“Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism”- Mary McCarthy

I enjoyed this weeks descussion in class on the concept of bureaucracies. I find it interesting how at the surface it seems to be the most rational and efficient way for governments and coorporations to opperate, a set of guidelines and procedures with a chain of command. What could go wrong? While it sounds like a good idea in theory, in practice it aint so great. Due to the nature of bureaucracies, no one person is really in complete control and no one individual stuck in the middle of the higherarchy has the authority to do what may seem to be more efficient or even simply what common sence would suggest at the time.In otherwords, regardless of efficiency,everyone involved has to abide by the rules set in place, they must follow procedure; regardless of whether or not they will actually accomplish anything by doing so. Thus, the inefficiency which employs well over 2,000,000 people continues on, becoming more and more pointless in a wonderful example of the snowball principle (number of federal bureau employees graciously provided by the bureau of labor statistics...isnt that just awsome?!?) . Another interesting thing we talked about in class was the major goal of any bureaucracy, not to actually accomplish what it was created for, but to simply continue existing...forever, in a perpetual state of pointlesness. Apperently they preserve themselves and try to grow by attempting to consume larger and larger chunks of the federal budget, with no regard for equalibrium points. Going back to the DOD defense satalite example we heard in class, even though we might only need $300 billion worth of satalites, if they can snach it up, the DOD (which is a part of the federal bureaucracy) would gladly spend $500 billion even though it is way past what is needed, or even beneficial. They seem to pay no mind to the concept of deminishing returns.