As you might know, I live in Germany. And if there's only one thing people say about Germans it's that we love our bureaucracy. As a German, I have to acknowledge how there's some truth behind every stereotype. But ranting on the internet about the stupidity of bureaucracy is easy and I don't write this blog because I want you to press the "like" button (whoops, there is none, go figure). No, I want to do one of the most German things imaginable and write this piece with the intention to explain why I think that much of the hate bureaucracy is getting is unjustified and why I'd prefer it if there was more, not less, bureaucracy.
First of all, let's look at why we have bureaucracy at all: Living together with other people is difficult. Everyone has slightly different needs, dreams, desires, fears and plans. People constantly want to do stuff which often leads to one person wanting to do something that another person doesn't like. Without a thing called "society", the solution to that would be to bash each other's head in until the stronger person gets their will. It's how many animal species (and some particularly stupid humans) handle their disputes to this day. A better way, at least in my view, is to agree on a set of rules that limit what people can do and prescribe what they have to tolerate. In an ideal world, these rules would be a perfect compromise but that is probably impossible. Finding these rules is the most interesting part of this process, which is why philosophers tend to focus on it. This blog post, however, does not.
Instead, let's look at those people who bring the rules into action. Those people who implement the processes that the rules define. The bureaucrats. Their task is fundamentally boring, as an ideal bureaucrat does not get to make any decisions at all. They're like a machine that executes the algorithm which is the law. Here lies already the first source of misconceptions, anger and ridicule towards bureaucrats: people blame them although their actual problem is the law. It's incredible how often you see people arguing with bureaucrats, swearing at them, trying to convince them, completely unaware that they might as well try to argue with an ATM to convince it to give them free money. It's just not how the system works.
Confusingly, another problem people have with bureaucracy is when the bureaucrats *do* get to make decisions. This usually happens when the law is ambiguous or contradictory or when people don't adhere to it properly. The real downer here is that this problem can only be mitigated but not completely prevented. It is obviously impossible to make a perfect set of rules that defines every cause of action in every situation. But to build a good bureaucracy you have to try. And oh boy do we Germans try. And this is where people diverge, this is why people make fun of Germans, and this is the main point I want to argue here: Why is it so bad if bureaucrats get to make decisions?
The simple answer to this question is: because they are people. Humans are very ill equipped to make decisions that are morally sound, fair and consistent. Additionally, the ability to decide always comes with responsibility and people hate that. If something goes wrong, someone needs to be held accountable. That is usually the person who made the decision *unless* they were just following a rule. So the people mostly harmed by unspecific or contradictory laws are the bureaucrats. So if we strive for fairness, not only for the bureaucrats but for everyone, we better make sure that the government makes the decisions instead of the bureaucrats and that the government is held accountable if something goes wrong.
This leads into my final and most striking reason why people hate bureaucracy so much: because politicians want them to. Politicians like to be vague about things, because they hate being accountable just as much as everyone else. But, as opposed to the bureaucrats, it's their job to be accountable. And in a democracy it's our job as the people to *hold them accountable*. Putting all the blame on some poor people in offices is such an easy way out for them. They use the bureaucrats like shields. Whenever the government fails someone, they learn it from a bureaucrat. And the way our primitive brains cope with bad news makes it ever so tempting to shoot the messenger. After all, evolution really didn't have enough time yet to get the bashing-each-other's-head-in out of them. So next time you're annoyed with bureaucracy, try to see past the people at the desks and ask yourself if the world would really be better without those rules and, if yes, if you shouldn't be more annoyed with the people who made these rules than the ones following them.
But before I end this post, I want to touch on the fact that there is also valid criticism towards bureaucracy. The most prominent one being inefficiency. Although even this criticism is often unjustified as people tend to be unaware of the sheer complexity bureaucrats have to deal with, many administrations and government agencies are often stuck with very inefficient processes. There is often too little incentive to improve these processes, as this would involve making changes and making changes introduces the risk of making mistakes, and for mistakes you can be held accountable and, as previously mentioned, people hate that.
I don't have a good solution for this problem, but I know that the answer is not "less bureaucracy". If anything, the answer is "more bureaucracy". Let me explain. As a software developer, my first instinct is to assist these processes with more digitalization and many other people seem to think the same thing. But that means that we need to replace some of the work bureaucrats do my *actual* algorithms, running on *actual* machines. Unfortunately, this makes it *actually* impossible to be vague about the rules. So, when developing software to automate these processes one will come across thousands of tiny details, edge cases and exceptions that all need a decision on how to handle them. Software developers are not the right people to make these decisions and the processes used for software development make it difficult to take them to people who actually should make them. But if we manage that, the result is more rules, more processes and thus more bureaucracy.
My controversial take is that this would be a good thing. I think that there is value in trying to answer these questions instead of dodging them and hoping they blow up somewhere else. Naturally there would be bugs. When developing laws or software, there will always be bugs. But then they need to be fixed. There need to be processes on how to fix them and how to reduce negative consequences. It's a development effort that will likely never be complete.
But it's better than just giving up and accepting that sometimes things need to come down to people bashing their heads in.
