Hannah Arendt on bureaucracy

The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence.  In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted.  Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant. 

~ Hannah Arendt

Sam Walton on bureaucracy

A lot of bureaucracy is really the product of some empire builder's ego.

~ Sam Walton

Doug Casey on the health care bureaucracy

[S]ince [the government's] now involved in absolutely everything, you need “experts” to decide what’s to be done.

We see this today with people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who’s nothing more than a lifelong bureaucrat. He’s lived in the swamp his entire life, and he’s a typical technocrat. He believes he knows what’s best for you.

People like Fauci have assumed tremendous power over other people and the way society works. He’s a clever politician and has been effective at backslapping and backstabbing. And wheedling his way into a high bureaucratic position. The government is full of people like him.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on How Fake Science is Used as Propaganda," LewRockwell.com, June 18, 2020

Jeffrey Tucker on the discovery process

But what kind of society do we need in order to maximize the potential of this form of spontaneous development of individuals and societies? A society hobbled by preset agendas emanating from fixed regulations and laws presume the opposite of a trial-and-error society. They indulge the illusion of knowledge, the myth of certainty, the fantasy that a static order with known solutions can be forced on everyone.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "Shakira’s Musical Disquisition on Uncertainty, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship," American Institute For Economic Research, February 4, 2020

Curt Howland on the failure of public schools

The single biggest reason for the failure of the government “school” system is that it is a government system.

The purpose of the system is to serve their customers.  The students and parents are not the customers, the bureaucrats and politicians who pay the bills are. Since it is the politicians and bureaucrats who are the customers, the “school” system serves their customers by growing, employing more bureaucrats, demanding more taxes, expanding their facilities. That is how a bureaucracy measures success: larger staff, bigger budgets. Students and parents are a cost to be minimized. Any actual education is incidental to the real purpose of the “school” system, which is to perpetuate and grow the “school” system.

When government bureaucracies fail at their supposed goals, they are given more money and more personnel. That is bureaucratic success.  So by minimizing any actual “education,” by making the “school” system as awful as possible for the students while using propaganda to convince parents the system is actually necessary, the bureaucracy best serves their actual customers while ensuring ever growing budgets and bureaucratic staff.

If people care about education, the first and best thing they can do is get their precious children out of the government “schools."

~ Curt Howland, Quora answer, January 2, 2020

Will Durant on bureaucracy

The king dies, but the bureaucracy is immortal.

~ Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, Page 363

Bret Stephens on Brexit and the EU bureaucracy

The EU's bureaucratic arm - the Council and the Commission - employs about 33,000 civil servants. The U.K.'s civil service has 410,000 employees, not counting an additional four million public-sector workers. The EU's budget last year came to less than $160 billion, divided among 28 countries. Britain's was $1.15 trillion.

If there's a superstate, it's in Westminster, not Brussels. And the EU, despite its countless flaws, is not some colossal squid crushing the U.K. in its powerful tentacles.

[...]

A British taxpayer making over £43,000 ($57,000) pays a crushing tax rate of 40%, along with a 20% VAT on every item he purchases. The average wait time for an operation with the National Health Service is 10 weeks. The energy bill for an average British household jumped by 30% between 2011 and 2015, mainly to support David Cameron's green-energy fixation.

These problems are British, not EU-made.

~ Bret Stephens, "Of Trumpkins and Brexiteers," The Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2016

Ron Paul on capitalism

Capitalism is not a system, but rather the result of free individuals taking economic actions without interference by government. A true capitalist economy is neither planned by bureaucrats nor steered by regulators.

~ Ron Paul

Leonard Read on "worrycrats"

Worrycrats, as I call them, are a special breed of totalitarian bureaucrats who spawn rapidly as society is socialized. These people concern themselves with our health, education, welfare, auto safety, drug intake, diet, and what have you. Worrycrats today outnumber any other professionals in history, so rapidly have they proliferated.

~ Leonard E. Read, The Freeman (April 1971)

Celia Green on committees

The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs.

~ Celia Green