Self Terminating Bureaucracy. Is this an oxymoron?

Warning: The writer is not a student of history, or archaeology. Observations used in analysis are contemporary. The reader is cautioned to assess his own decision making criteria before accepting as valid anything set forth here.

The writer (me)is aware of some analytical capability, has had some training in observation. Has been a student in Social Psychology; is continually attempting to offload cultural baggage and refine his decision making skills.

Your comments are important. Do not cry in the wilderness, be unheard in a public forum. Bureaucracies will be reborn interminably; they may always be with us. Why do we have bureaucracies? Bureaucracy was discovered and developed by the first group leaders as a way of passing off work while holding on to power. The bureaucracy tries to usurp power. We now have ways of replacing leaders without killing them. We also share the leadership responsibility through an electoral process.

We are busy enjoying the benefits of technology and like the first leaders do not have time for the administrative work. The first elected leaders were probably tribe elders. They were elected in a figurative manner. Elders that would lead the tribe to destruction lost influence, if not before definitely after.

The idea of a tribe was a good idea. It was more efficient than loners working in anarchy. It also provided a way of identifying those that a person might cooperate with in some degree of safety.

Getting rid of a bad bureaucracy is more difficult than dumping a bad leader. By bad I mean something that nearly everyone dislikes. The bureaucracy brings together a selection of skills which can be coordinated to simulate a kind of extra intelligent entity. So why do we keep getting bureaucracies that we see as verging toward bad. Simply put an intelligent entity must work with the information it husbands as fact, and an intelligent entity "...orients itself and organises it's environment to achieve its goals". I believe that verbalisation is from A.North. Whitehead's essay on evolution. A bureaucracy behaves much like you or me.

The information gathering arm is biased by the dreams of the visionary arm, which rewards the information gathering system immediately for information that fosters it's dreams. So after a time the decision making function is working with bad data or misinformation.

Perhaps history is an account of the misfortunes of reborn bureaucracies. So what can you do about it? Well the answer is, a lot of things. First do a much as you can to see that these administrators get correct information. The information with the most support "must" be correct or at least acted on as if factual. Traditionally in our law system the bureaucracy reports to the tribe leaders or their agents. In our case, Members of Parliament. Your representatives need to hear from you so they can make decisions that will bring them popularity and perhaps fame and fortune; even reelection. I found it disturbing that Franz Kafka was familiar with the behaviour of our Regional, Provincial and Federal Bureaucracies, I was younger and innocenter then.

"We missed a turn back there, This is not the promised land. Someone was not watching out. Was it you? I was busy at the time!" Did Harold Menchen say that ?

For now this is the "end" of  Self Terminating Bureacracies
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