purple motes

La Meurte de un burócrata, which was made in 1966 by the Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and which is transliterated into English as The Death of a Bureaucrat, is an important film for viewers to view so that by that means the viewer will come to appreciate the importance of following appropriate procedures when engaged in burying a dead person when a claim for a pension is to be filed, so that the claim can be processed without unnecessary delay.  The length of the film is 85 minutes.  The format of the film is black and white.  The language of the film is Spanish.  The sound mix of the film is mono. It is recommended that this film be shown in schools, where the ages of the pupils are 15 to 18 years old, so that they do not misinterpret the meaning of the film, which should be preceded by a Powerpoint presentation outlining the key points.  In accordance with the results-based viewing standards established under LT-156/C, the standard evaluation form WTF-71 should be distributed after the showing.  Viewers should not be allowed to leave the cinema until the completed form is handed in to Evaluation Coordinator, who should ensure that the cinema doors are securely locked after the film begins and until such time as the Projection Director certifies that the viewing has impacted the viewers.

This month's other bureaucratic issues:

We note Paul Day's list of  "12 ways to design bureaucracy-free organizations."  This list is no cause for concern.   Eliminating bureaucracy from an organization will leave only entrepreneurs.  Then the organization will completely cease functioning and die.  Darwinian survival of the survivalists continually reproduces bureaucracy.

Bureaucrats in Berlin reported for duty despite 37-degree Celsius heat.  The workers went home only when management ordered them to do so.

Svetlana Gladkova at profy reports that a social network has been set up to serve Russian bureaucrats.  She is concerned that, given the crushing burden of work that they face, Russian bureaucrats lack time to participate in a social network.   The obvious answer is to hire more bureaucrats so that all necessary tasks can be completed.

According to John M. Glionna at the Los Angeles Times, some China officials are urging Chinese government bureaucrats to work less in giving speeches.  Those officials are lazy and foolish.  A woman outside a Beijing coffee shop noted:

This is just the way all Chinese express themselves in public. It's in our heritage and goes back to the way old Chinese poems were constructed.

The Chinese Ministry of Planning Production Affairs should hire this woman into a senior position.

James Otteson at Pileus laments that New Jersey officials did not correctly fill out a federal form and hence lost a $400 million grant.  This story shows that the federal government has greater bureaucratic competence than does the New Jersey government.  New Jersey should commission a task force to create a report on how to improve New Jersey's bureaucratic competence.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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Among superheroes, Judge Bao is a much stronger than Superman. Judge Bao has represented justice in China for about a thousand years. Superman was invented about seventy-five years ago. Judge Bao is righteous, fearless, and incorruptible. Superman has a well-known vulnerability to Kryptonite and a weakness for Lois Lane. Judge Bao does his official job. Superman is a freelancing amateur. Judge Bao represents bureaucratic strength. Superman represents the individual initiative of an orphan.

Every country needs bureaucratic heroes like Judge Bao.  A recent scholarly article observed:

Judge Bao is only the most prominent representative of the “pure official” (qingguan) in Chinese popular literature. Every age has added new figures to this gallery of saintly and heroic bureaucrats. Popular tradition turned historical officials who had distinguished themselves by their probity, purity, daring and stubborn steadfastness in the pursuit of justice into figures of legend. Once that happened, cases easily moved from one pure official to the next as their legends were further embellished by subsequent generations. In their efforts to maintain the proper social order and to eliminate all crime, these pure officials, if need be with the support of divine powers, do away with thieves and murderers, lecherous monks and adulterous wives, corrupt officials who disregard the law, and thousand-year-old animals that charm gullible young men. Elites and commoners in both traditional and modern China viewed these pure officials as the staunch defenders of the highest spiritual and social values of Chinese culture.[*]

Chinese culture is a great culture. Making bureaucrats into legends and superheroes helps to make a culture great.

In other bureaucratic news this month...

Jim Henshaw at the Legion of Decency records the huge amount of work that bureaucrats in Canada do. Recent work includes the development of 27 separate initiatives for reducing sodium consumption. Analyzing statistics undoubtedly contributed to the development of 27 initiatives. Yet the Canadian government recently weakened Census statistical gathering. Jim asks:

How come the bureaucrats screaming now about not having the stats they need weren't screaming back then when nobody acted on the reports they slavishly labored to produce using them?

Everybody should be chanting and screaming, "Work produced by bureaucrats should be acted on by us!"

Candra Malik at Jakarta Globe claims, "Bureaucrats in Central Java Protest Prosecutor’s Dedication to Doing His Job." That's completely absurd. No bureaucratic value is more important than focusing on doing your job and not doing anyone else's job.

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land considers regulating the New York Times' process for determining what to cover and how to cover it. On a typical day, the New York Times newsroom might ponder whether to write a story on the effect of the Gulf oil spill on the occupational risks of women shrimp fisherpersons, or a story on how male-only mandatory Selective Service registration discriminates against women and could potentially lessen the number of role models for female fighter-pilots, or a story documenting the injustice of men still not doing an equal share of home decorating. Deciding which of these stories is front page news requires well-developed journalistic expertise. As to whether bureaucrats could regulate the New York Times, they already do.

The Free Press of Mankato, Minnesota, covers the big story of the bureaucratic battle about the repainting of a silo near Highway 169. Thus far, the silo has attracted concern from Cambria Countertops, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the Nicollet County Attorney, an Administrative Law Judge in St. Paul, and the Minnesota Insurance Trust. We believe that further opportunities for bureaucratic development should be explored.

Commenting on a post on Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) at Armed and Dangerous, Shenpen insightfully observes:

I found the following a good, useful heuristic: always assume that an average, typical big corporation is much similar in culture / internal incentive systems to some sort of a government bureau than to an entrepreneur.

We could even make a general economic law of it: incentives get diluted by every step by which the decision-making person is removed from people who actually own things, and what matters is not whether the organization in question is officially called public or private but the actual number of such steps, and the main reason we see public working worse than private is not because it is different is essence but because the number of such steps is usually much higher.

While the superiority of bureaucracy is usually self-evident, Kurt Denke at Blue Jeans Cable seems to have successfully turned aside monstrous litigation-intimidation machinery. We definitely will in the future buy all our cables from Blue Jeans Cable. But don't expect to find many small organizations like Blue Jeans Cable. Bureaucracy, in one form or another, is usually the winning bet.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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[*] Idema, Wilt Lukas, Introduction to Judge Bao and the Rule of Law: Eight Ballad-Stories from the Period 1250-1450 (December 23, 2009) p. x.  Wilt L. Idema, JUDGE BAO AND THE RULE OF LAW, World Scientific Publishing, 2009 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1588363

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In China in 958, Zhai Fengda's wife, "the mother of our family," died.  To benefit her spirit, Zhai, then a seventy-five-year-old man, carefully and accurately followed the instructions of the Buddhist text, The Scripture on the Ten Kings.  These instructions required Zhai to make copies of Buddhist scriptures at specific time intervals following his wife's death.  In a colophon to the first scripture copied, Zhai wrote:

"On the night of the first day of the third month of the fifth year of the Hsien-te era, designated wu-wu in the sequence of years [23 March 958], the body of our mother, the lady Mrs. Ma, passed away.  On the seventh day [29 March 958] we hold the feast of the opening seven.  The Acting Vice Director of the Ministry of Public Works in the Department of States Affairs, Zhai Fengda, in remembrance reverently copied The Scripture on Impermanence on one scroll and reverently painted one picture of the Thus Come Buddha Pao-chi.  For every week until the third full year, on each feast one scroll of scripture will be copied as a posthumous blessing.  We pray that Mother's shadow be entrusted and her spirit roam to be reborn in a fine place, and that she not fall into the calamities of the three paths.  Offered fully and forever."[1]

This and other colophons to subsequently copied scriptures include colloquial terms for mother.[2]  Yet amidst his personal grief and concern, Zhai wrote in his lengthy, formal bureaucratic title.   Moreover, even in this document for eternity, Zhai acknowledged his "Acting" status, a transitional status that he nonetheless endured for more than three years.   These actions indicate an exceptionally well-developed bureaucratic character.

Zhai showed relatively little bureaucratic promise as a young man.  While he had scribal training, he also composed poetry.  In a poem Zhai composed when he was twenty years old, he asserted:

The lad who studies not the reading of poetry and rhapsodies
Resembles most the gnarled roots of flowering trees.[3]

This is a fine poem.   But bureaucrats should not write poetry, even bad poetry.

Zhai subsequently developed a more refined bureaucratic sense.   At age forty, Zhai appended below this poem his new feelings, "seeing this poem by chance, I am simply mortified with shame."[4]  Zhai then had been describing himself in documents as "Lackey, Acting Attendant Officer and Counselor."  By age sixty, Zhai had worked his way to a much higher bureaucratic level.   His title, as he wrote it, was then:

Lackey to the Military Commissioner, Acting Attendant Officer and Counselor, Grand Master of Imperial Entertainments with Silver Seal and Blue Ribbon, Chancellor of the Directorate of Education, Concurrently Vice Censor-in-Chief, Supreme Pillar of State.[5]

In bureaucratic corporations, almost all the Senior Vice Presidents probably would strangle their own mothers to acquire a title this long and impressive.   Nonetheless, they probably would lack sufficient bureaucratic character to include their titles in invitations to their mothers' funerals.

Other notable bureaucratic items this month:

The Spy Blog (Watching Them, Watching Us) states that UK Police and Home Office bureaucrats are not rubber-stamping adequately.  Rubber stamping is a key bureaucratic competence.  This problem should be investigated immediately.

Terry Heaton at the PoMo Blog explains that top-line Budget Rental Car insurance doesn't include an important risk.  You have to read the full, obscure details of the insurance form to understand this.  Most persons still do not receive sufficient bureaucratic education.   Until the educational system is sufficiently bureaucratized, I think Budget Rental Car's insurance policy is totally unfair.

Laurent De Muyter at the European Telecommunications Law Blog reports that the office of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) will be located in Riga.  From a bureaucratic perspective, BEREC is a quite sexy body.  This Body should spur bureaucratic travel and tourism to Latvia.

Gizmodo examines the criminal justice system criminalizing persons taking photos of on-the-job police officers.   Such photos might show police engaging in illegal activities.  This creates immense bureaucratic problems, because police officers' job description requires them to stop persons engaged in illegal activities.  Moreover, ordinary citizens are not police officers, hence its not their job to stop persons, including police officers, engaging in illegal activities.   Protecting citizens from illegal actions of persons carrying guns is a fundamental purpose of government.  We recommend the formation of a commission to study whether citizens should be able to take photos of on-the-job police officers, including those who follow them into their home.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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Notes:

[1] Trans. from Teiser (1994) pp. 102-3.  In the Wade-Giles romanization system, Zhai's name is written as Chai Feng-ta.  In the quoted text, I have changed that name to Zhai Fengda.  Id.  ft. 2 convincingly argues that Lady Ma was Zhai's wife, not his mother.

[2] Id. pp. 102-3, ft. 2.

[3] Trans, id. p. 117.   Despite not being able to read medieval Chinese, I have replaced "withered" with "gnarled" in the above translation.  The latter word seems to me much more poetically appropriate and is plausibly within the semantic range of the original Chinese character.  On the translation, see id. p. 117, ft. 41.  In a dedication to a copy of Hymns Extolling the Scripture and A Record of the Verifications and Merit to Be Gained, Zhai wrote that he hoped, for his parents and for everyone following Buddha,"blessings will be the same as spring grasses, and sins be like autumn sprouts."  See id. p. 119.  Zhai wrote that in 908.  It's a poetic sentiment totally inappropriate for a bureaucrat.

[4] Id. p. 118.

[5] See id. p. 243, title written ca. 940.  The previous title is from id.  p. 242, written ca. 924.

Reference:

Teiser, Stephen F. 1994.  The scripture on the ten kings and the making of purgatory in medieval Chinese Buddhism.  Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

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Nothing is more important for a bureaucratic report than its cover sheet.  The cover sheet is what people will see.  When the report has its brief moment of glory on the top of a paper stack on a bureaucrat's desk, the cover sheet has to shine.

You know the old saying: don't judge a book by its contents.  No one opens most books.  The cover is what matters.  It's the same for bureaucratic reports.

Don't delay.  Set up a meeting today to discuss your organization's cover sheets.

In other bureaucratic reporting this month...

Terry Heaton at the PoMo Blog faults Intel for "shareholder value being put above the future of the company."   That's a classic mistake that non-bureaucratic organizations make.  Bureaucratic organizations recognize that nothing is more important than the future of the organization.

Brad Templeton at Brad Ideas reports that a movie studio has issued a DMCA takedown notice for his Hitler parody of movie studios issuing DMCA takedown notices.   We see nothing surprising here for persons without a sense of humor or irony.

University College Cork, under the expert leadership of its president Michael B. Murphy, has succeeded in creating a large problem from a small problem.  Although this success concerns a bat sex study, it has general applicability.  Such techniques are vital for preserving and expanding workforce employment.  Careful study of this technique would be valuable for bureaucrats worldwide.

Techcrunch reports on debate about whether Firefox is heading for a massive decline.  Firefox co-founder Blake Ross, now no longer with the Mozilla organization that supports Firefox development, declares:

I’m pretty skeptical. I think the Mozilla Organization has gradually reverted back to its old ways of being too timid, passive and consensus-driven to release breakthrough products quickly.

Mozilla is maturing into a fully capable bureaucratic organization.  Such a development can only help to secure the future of Firefox.

Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man reports that Texas County Judge Daniel Burkeen has sent a letter to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality inquiring whether he should consider both urination and defecation.  We believe that defecation is more serious problem than urination, but we urge the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to study the matter carefully.  Bureaucrats dutifully handle such work.  The public should be grateful.

Ars Technica reports on a Pew survey documenting that Internet users like government websites.   Many governments have developed world-class bureaucracies.  Internet start-ups that want to be successful on the web need to invest in bureaucracy.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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Nothing is more important in a bureaucracy than allowing everyone to have their voice heard.  If you just talk to yourself in your cubicle, everyone else in your department won't hear your voice.  That's especially true if your company's space is equipped with plush, sound-absorbing cubicle dividers.   If you have your own office, then talking to yourself in your office surely won't give you a chance to have your voice heard.  The answer is meetings.

Suppose that the Senior Deputy Associate Vice President for Planning needs to decide whether to submit the Interdivisional Coordination Planning Statement for interdivisional review.   All stakeholders need to be given the opportunity to have their voices heard before this decision can be made.  The Planning Policy Task Force -- five Assistant Deputy Vices and one Administrative Professional -- attends the meeting, along with a courier, two children taken to work in lieu of missed daycare, a homeless person who sleeps on the back side of the building, and two department managers deluded with the false promise of donuts.  After about a half hour of team-building pleasantries, the Deputy Vice President for Planning asks whether anyone is uncomfortable with submitting the Planning Statement for interdivisional review.   The Senior Assistant Vice for Strategy begins to speak.

The key issue is how our SWOT analysis affects the ROI of the review function, he says.  It's just like the faucet in the break room, which keeps leaking.  That wastes water. I've called Administrative Services every day for the past week about the problem, and nothing is being done.  Planning is a strategic function for our organization and key to our competitive advantage.   I don't think anyone here will deny that.  [looks around the room at blank faces]  We've got to work harder, not smarter.   But we can't do that until we get our timecard system fixed.  I took a half-day of vacation two weeks ago, but my pay stub a week later showed a full day of vacation.  I filled the VJ-61 to amend the time card, but the time keeper rejected the amendment.   What am I supposed to do?  [no response]  I just think that we've got to improve our planning and coordination functions, but I don't see how we can do it with our current timekeeping system, and that faucet is still leaking, too. [stops talking]

Thank you very much for making your voice heard, says the Senior Deputy Associate Vice.  Would anyone else like to make their voice heard?  Six other persons give similar speeches.  The children start to cry during the second of these.  Their parents quickly pick them up and leave the room.  Seven persons subsequently leave the room at discrete intervals.  The remaining speaker finishes and excuses herself to run to another meeting.  That leaves the Senior Deputy Associate Vice in the meeting by herself.  The decision to postpone submitting the Planning Statement for interdivisional review is thus made unanimously.

There's no more powerful demonstration than this of bureaucratic participation.

In other bureaucratic reporting this month...

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti says that bureaucrats running the Central Statistical Office are incompetent.   Bureaucrats loyally follow their leaders.   These bureaucrats are highly competent.  They should be honored, not condemned.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has recognized the importance of bureaucrats.  So too should all political leaders.

In the preface to The Screwtape Letters (1961), C.S. Lewis declares:

I like bats much better than bureaucrats.  I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin."  The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint.  It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps.  In those we see its final result.  But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

Dated nonsense.  Batty professors should be ignored.  Ignored!

Luisa at Lasse, Get Help complains about the careful and dedicated work of bureaucrats.  Some people think that you can tell a dog by its looks.  Bureaucrats are more thorough.  They will study the dog for several months.

Autonomous Mind complains about French bureaucrats concern for boat-passenger safety.  Desperate people will get into any boat, even one that will sink.  Bureaucrats ensure that your boat will float.

Terry Telco offers Laws of Terry.  Remember this one:

#15: Any meeting is worth having again. Any great meeting is worth a recurring Outlook invite.

Just like any other skill, meetings improve with repetition.

Tasha the Triathlon Goddess at The Thighmaster Route to Kona is surprised by her experience making a claim at her County Board of Appeals:

Bu....bu......you.....I.......can I just tell you how great you all are? Seriously! You know, with this health care reform, people keep talking about how inefficient and horrible government is, but you’re all wonderful, and then compare that to the idiots I talk to at BCBS about the bills for The Cancer!

We don't find this experience surprising at all.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats.  Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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The U.S. Homestead Act of 1862 was a landmark law.   An exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, DC, insightfully explains:

Today, Government forms are commonplace.  But when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862, they were something of a novelty. ... To prove their claims, homesteaders filled out some of the first standard forms issued by the U.S. Government.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pa generated at least 24 pages of Homestead Act forms in acquiring a homestead in the Dakota Territory in the 1880s.  Churning butter, milking cows, feeding chickens -- next to filling out forms, those were relatively unimportant aspects of pioneer life.   Without forms, there would be no land, and without land, there would be no farm.  Nonetheless, filling out forms was excluded from Wilder's popular story of pioneer life, Little House on the Prairie.  Generations of youngsters have thus grown up lacking appreciation for the role of bureaucracy in the wild West.  We recommend that the U.S. Department of Education form a committee to develop a proposal for a curriculum of civic education in the importance of bureaucracy in the westward expansionization of the U.S. by pioneers.

We are disturbed by Fool's'Cool report on bureaucrats in Andra Pradesh:

Disillusioned, dispirited, disgusted, disenchanted, dismayed, disoriented, demoralized, dejected…… these adjectives sum up the current state of bureaucracy in Andhra Pradesh.

A committee should be formed immediately to study this deplorable situation.

David Meerman Scott reports that Japanese bureaucrats are working hard to protect fossils and dinosaurs.  We applaud this stewardship of the natural environment.

Adam Mynott reports on a two-week long meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.  He describes these important meetings as "monuments to bureaucracy":

they present a televised world stage to middle-ranking bureaucrats who, once they have pressed the button on the desk in front of them illuminating a red light indicating their microphone is on, seem very reluctant to switch it off again.

They will not switch it off until all the relevant problems have been solved.  That's bureaucratic dedication.

Ben Eltham describes the new Super Bureaucrats.  But Super Bureaucrats are not new.  The whole record of human history is filled with outstanding bureaucrats.

The Neighborhood Retail Alliance complains that bureaucrats in New York City are grading restaurants for cleanliness.  Bureaucrats are already subject to job appraisal ratings.  Why should restaurants be any different?

Russian President Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is concerned about the performance of Russian bureaucracy: "He said that the reports that government and organizations send to him are 'not always substantial.' "  President Medvedev should ask for a report containing statistics on pages produced per bureaucrat.  A bureaucrat who does not produce at least 4 pages per week isn't doing substantial work.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats.  Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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Many persons mistakenly imagine bureaucrats to be slave-like drones.  But drones cannot erect towering monuments of bureaucracy like the Great Pyramid of Giza.  New archeological findings prove that the workers who built the Great Pyramid of Giza were not slaves, but workers honored for their work.

About 10,000 workers, working three-month shifts, took more than 30 years to build the pyramid.   Today bureaucratic work has intensified to year-round shifts, and most bureaucratic projects typically take a decade before the business is finished.

But the nature of bureaucratic work -- repetitive piling of similar pieces higher and higher -- has not changed in the roughly 3,500 years since the Great Pyramid was built.  Adel Okasha, supervisor of the excavation, noted of the workers, "Their skeletons have signs of arthritis, and their lower vertebrae point to a life passed in difficulty."  Many bureaucrats suffer from difficulties moving and have weak spines.  Poor sitting positions are a major cause of bureaucratic spinal problems.

Bureaucrats persevere, despite the hardships, because they understanding the enduring importance of their work.  Dieter Wildung, a former director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, observes, "The world simply could not believe the pyramids were build without oppression and forced labor, but out of loyalty to the pharaohs."  Bureaucrats are stolidly loyal to their leaders and willing to sacrifice for their organizations.   The result is astonishing monuments of bureaucracy readily visible today.

In other bureaucratic news this month, Theodore Dalrymple lectures on the great entrepreneurial economist and bureaucratic champion John Kenneth Galbraith.   Galbraith, whose name is similar to Galbi, harvested a key insight:

Galbraith pointed out (though it was not a new insight, as he acknowledged) that large corporations’ managers developed interests of their own and, furthermore, that their powers often came to exceed those of the stockholders who actually owned the corporations. Not maximal profit to the stockholders, but maximal advantage to themselves, was the managers’ goal; in fact, the managers were bureaucrats, not entrepreneurs. The classical model was thus defunct as a reflection of reality. And perhaps more important to Galbraith was that the moral and economic superiority of private over public enterprise collapsed, for both were run by bureaucracies.

The unifying value of bureaucracy transcends trivial and hackneyed arguments about public versus private enterprise.  What's good for bureaucracy is good for your country.

Claus von Zastrow vigorously defends educational bureaucrats at the Public School Insights blog.  We agree with his arguments.  Without educational bureaucracy, students wouldn't be prepared to join the adult workforce.

Mencius Moldbug at Unqualified Reservations praises the work of bureaucrats.  Mr. Moldbug observes:

Almost all scientists today are bureaucrats. For scientists with administrative positions in professional societies, it goes without saying. But not all bureaucrats are evil, dishonest people. Far from it.

Quite far indeed.

Civil Liberties Australia pointlessly complains that bureaucrats requested a three-year sleep diary.  Sleep is important to bureaucrats.  It should be important to you, too.

Roman Jones at Blazing Torches reports that the European Commission (EU) has produced a children's comic book telling the fictional story of two EU bureaucrats' humanitarian work.  We believe such fiction is good for children.

Lim Teck Gee highlights injustices that the Malaysian bureaucracy has not yet alleviated.  Part of the problem seems to be that the Malaysian bureaucracy isn't sufficiently diverse.  Bureaucracy should encompass all the persons in a country.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has renamed its "Federal Human Capital Survey" to "Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey".  We applaud this change, which underscores the actual personhood of human capital.   The news release concludes:

OPM will be encouraging the government's Chief Human Capital Officers to use the data to help them with their workforces, and it is expected that agency managers will make a sophisticated assessment of their own human capital management and develop an action plan for improvement.

We believe that the name-change committee should produce an action plan before the Chief Human Capital Officers begin their planning meetings.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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Thanks to Paul Mannix for sharing the photo from which I derived the above image.

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Bureaucrats do not merely sit at their desks, calmly floating in an environment that outside energy supports.  Bureaucrats play an active role in generating their own support.  Scientists that levitated a frog insightfully explain:

As you might well know, all matter in the universe consists of small particles called atoms and each atom contains electrons that circle around a nucleus. This is how the world is made.

If one places an atom (or a large piece of a matter containing billions and billions of atoms) in a magnetic field, electrons doing their circles inside do not like this very much. They alter their motion in such a way as to oppose this external influence.

Incidentally, this is the most general principle of Nature: whenever one tries to change something settled and quiet, the reaction is always negative (you can easily check out that this principle also applies to the interaction between you and your parents). So, according to this principle, the disturbed electrons create their own magnetic field and as a result the atoms behave as little magnetic needles pointing in the direction opposite to the applied field. [footnotes omitted]

The result is levitation of the frog in the magnetic field.  Confronted with external energy directed toward change, bureaucrats also act according to this most general principle of Nature.  Each of the billions of atoms in each bureaucrat's body generates a counter-reaction.  Bureaucrats' active interaction with the energy around them not only generates support for bureaucrats, but actually enables bureaucrats to fly.

Other bureaucratic reports this month:

Suthichai Yoon reports that the Prime Minister of Thailand has formed a Coordination Committee to monitor Cabinet decisions.  Coordination ranks only behind editing documents in bureaucratic importance.

The babu blogger reports that three bureaucrats were selected for India's prestigious Padma Bhusan award on the eve of India's 61'st Republic Day.  One of these administrative leaders is PR Dubhashi, a 1953 batch Karnataka cadre IAS.  Mr. Dubhashi has an impressive record of bureaucratic service:

After being trained at Metcalfe House, he began his career as an SDO in Davangere and later became deputy commissioner in drought-prone Raichur in 1958-59. ... He also held some key posts like Establishment Officer (1978-80), additional secretary in ministry of agriculture (1980-81) and director of Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA).

He rose to the position of secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).  Mr. Dubhashi also wrote a book, Pursuing Idealism Through Civil Service: Memories Of An Administrator And A Trainer.   We join persons in India and around the world in celebrating Mr. Dubhashi's service.

Yoko Kubota reports that Japanese Finance Minister Naoto Kan has launched an initiative to encourage bureaucrats to go on dates on weeknights.   Ms. Kubota observes:

How exactly Kan plans to get the bureaucrats to go on dates is still unclear, though. In good bureaucratic fashion, he is setting up a team to come up with the details of the plan. ...

“If we can go home early, I’m sure I could go on dates more often,” one bureaucrat told me. “That is, if I can find someone to go with.”

This is a serious problem that deserves further study.

In England, Tamara Cohen reports  that Emma Chapelhow, age 13, is suing the U.K. Child Support Agency (CSA) over its determination to collect £43,000 in backdated payments from her father to her biological mother.   Emma has lived with her father since 2007.  Ignorant persons might question why these backdated payments from her father to her biological mother are called "child support".   The reason is simple: they are required by the Child Support Agency.   The child Emma complains in her suit that the Child Support Agency's enforcing of these payments will bankrupt her father and force her into poverty.  In addition:

the teenager claims that, four months ago, she was left in tears after bailiffs acting for the CSA allegedly threatened to take her pet pony Pringle to help meet the payments.

We regret the hardships that this girl faces, but the Child Support Agency is a major organization that transfers a huge amount of money from men to women under the force of law.  Sometimes a girl has to be sacrificed for the sake of the organization.

Everett Sizemore describes the regulation of chickens in Denver:

We can have chickens here, but must jump through some fairly asinine bureaucratic hoops and pay fees so high they make the whole exercise counterproductive. First you submit an application to Animal Control, which costs $50. Then they come out to inspect the site, never having actually provided any guidance on what standards you’re supposed to meet. If these people approve you (never mind the fact that they’re trained to deal with dogs and cats and most don’t even seem to realize a chicken doesn’t need a rooster to lay eggs) then you’re on to the zoning department. You will be required to contact the neighborhood organization and council member for your area, and post two notices at two different times in your front yard, informing any neighbors (not just next door, but from blocks away) of their right to object. Why they can object to you having a Nigerian Dwarf goat while you can have nothing to say about their five great danes has yet to be answered – but, providing they don’t object after 30 days, you can now purchase a permit for $100. This permit costs $70 for renewal every year. Keep in mind this is only for the chickens you had at the time. Should one of your hens die (and they only lay well for 2-3 years) you’re supposed to pay again for their replacements.

Here at the Carnival of Bureaucrats, we lack expertise in chickens.  However, a bureaucrat's cousin has a dove that laid an egg (sadly, like Mr. Sizemore's chickens, without the love, companionship,and freely given support of a male dove).   Apparently a pet dove can lay an egg without a permit.  Rather than bashing bureaucrats, we suggest that Mr. Sizemore rename his chickens to be doves.

Rob Roberts outrageously encourages Toronto residents to ignore impressive regulations that include a formal textual citation.   Around a pond in Toronto, which is far north in Canada, are signs that state: "Danger. Ice unsafe. Keep off. Municipal Code #608."   Mr. Roberts quibbles that the ambient temperature has been -10 degrees centigrade for at least a week.   However, regulations are not made for special cases such as Canadian winters.  He huffs that  playing hockey began on a pond in Canada.  That's logically no reason for it to continue on ponds in Canada.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats.  Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here.  Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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Images courtesy of the High Field Magnet Laboratory, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

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Aggressive young men sometimes think that, with strength and intelligence, they can bludgeon their way through bureaucracy.   They fail every time, and over time, they become frail, bitter, pensionless old men.   Don't let this happen to you.  To achieve a secure retirement, you need to learn how to survive in the corporate world.  Start by listening carefully to a helpful Noverian bureaucrat.

Ponder also the sage words of Richard Skinner, lighting designer for the Sackler Gallery's Falnama exhibition. He declares, "If my work is done properly, it should get no recognition whatsoever." To survive in the corporate world, you should strive to get as little recognition as possible. A basement office is superior to a top-floor office, because the former tends to be darker and in the opposite direction of most building office traffic. If you don't have any windows in your office, that's excellent.  Having a windowless office makes it more difficult for others to catch a glimpse of you.

On those evenings and weekends when you're not maintaining your position in your office, you should spend some time studying and memorizing the lives and writings of famous corporate leaders.  Recently I've been studying the career of Saddam Hussein.  He served as President of Iraq nearly long enough to have received a twenty-five-year service pin!  Saddam developed a highly influential strategy for choosing middle-and-upper-level managers:

Saddam lived in fear of a coup mounted by the Republican Guard. His solution was to create the Special Republican Guard, whose main remit was to protect him against coups particularly from the Republican Guard. You would think that the head of this outfit would be a fearsome figure who would terrify any budding coup plotters. Woods asked other leading figures if this was indeed the case and the answer was a resounding NO! Why? Saddam was well aware of the “who monitors the monitor problem” – what if the head of the Special Guard mounted a coup himself? Saddam’s solution was not original: appoint a relative. Make sure the appointee is a coward so he would not dream of mounting a coup. Just in case he is tougher than you might think, choose someone stupid so he cannot mount a successful coup and is too stupid to recognize someone else’s good ideas for a coup.

If Saddam had managed to get a patent on this business process, the royalties from its huge number of corporate users around the world would have been so large he could have just bought Kuwait instead of invading it.

We are pleased to learn that the European Commission has adopted a five-year plan for adopting a reform of English.  Once again, the U.S. is lagging behind Europe.

Bureaucrats in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry recently repelled an attack by journalists working for a major German magazine.  Information warfare is a crucial concern for forward-looking defense ministries.  Bureaucrats are a country's first line of defense.

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity warns of a possible reduction in college bureaucracies.  A reduction in college bureaucracies will leave students less prepared for life in the workplace.

The Thinking Policeman reviews efforts to reduce the bureaucracy that police officers have to navigate.  These efforts are unlikely to succeed.  A more auspicious approach would be to organize criminals into corporations.  The more criminals that are promoted to middle management, the less crime that will occur.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats. For readers observing the Gregorian calendar, we wish that this coming new year will successfully pass as the past year has. For those readers observing different fiscal calendars, we simply offer our best wishes for time to pass regularly.  As always, nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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Good bureaucratic work requires well-aged ingredients, careful planning, and thorough attention to detail.  You cannot bake your way through bureaucracy.   Baking, braising, buttering, calculating, reporting, and all other forms of cooking have a bureaucratic flavor.

A galantine de Poulard is an outstanding bureaucratic dish.  The term galatine may come from the old French term for "jelly."   It involves stuffing one meat inside another meat, pressing the combination into a cylindrical shape, and surrounding the meat form with fat.  Note that a galantine de Poulard requires a full five-day work week to prepare.  Hence you will not have to waste time as you would with fast food.

We also recommend Short Ribs Braised in Porter Ale with Maple-Rosemary Glaze.  That offers a fully satisfying 14 syllables.   It also has a glaze.  Any recipe that ends with a glaze is good bureaucratic cooking.  This one also embraces horseradish.

Long, detailed recipes set out as a series of required steps do not in themselves make for good bureaucratic cooking.   Good bureaucratic cooking has to be done in a heavy, impermeable, immalleable, non-stick pot.  The best is a cast-iron pot.  Cast iron has offered non-stick cooking long before newer, cheaper, less durable coatings on lighter metal pots.  Do not wash a cast-iron pot with soap and water or you will damage the surface seasoning.  Simply scour off food remains while the pot is still warm, and you're ready to consult a cook book to begin cooking again.

Other bureaucratic reporting this month:

Borud observes that bureaucrats "take great pride in doing things by the book."  If you want to make the dish correctly, you've got to follow the recipe.

Alim Remtulla provides a nice example of how bureaucrats encourage excellence:

my companion, an Afghan of few words and gentle features, explained that Kafkaesque bureaucracy is nothing new to this country. Under the Taliban he was forced to wear a beard of at least eight centimeters. Erring on the side of caution he kept it at ten.

Bureaucrats encourage citizens to go beyond the merely necessary.

Ranil Dissanayake at Aid Thoughts discusses lack of coordination among bureaucracies:

different departments within developing country bureaucracies become so preoccupied with developing and maintaining their own sphere of influence that their level of interaction tends to be minimal. What communication does exist is typically characterised by mutual antipathy. Budget departments do their work in isolation, emerging from the subterranean depths of their Excel spreadsheets to request information every once in a while. Planning departments produce strategies and plans without much discussion with either Tax and Revenues or External Finance. Tax departments produce new policies in close discussion with their Minister but rarely with the budget departments, let alone the separate Ministry of Trade and Industry.

Bureaucracies must unite.  In unity there is strength.

The Cultural Property observer asks, "Is the Italian cultural bureaucracy the best steward for coins?"   The answer is yes.   For the most important matters, you can count on bureaucrats.

Tina Tang describes her experience with Italian bureaucracy:

I waited almost two hours before my number got called. When it did, I found my way to the correct sportello, which turned out to be a desk with a gregarious lady sitting at it. She cracked jokes with me the whole time as she punched my information into the computer. I was in a bit of a surprised daze, having everybody be so nice and helpful to me.

I think this is a quite common experience, although its seldom noted. Most persons only regurgitate demeaning bureaucratic stereotypes.

Rainbow Scientist provides another heartwarming exception:

in 3-4 weeks, [my friend] got response from the pension office which deals with such case (not the one where he sent the forms, but they forwarded his forms to the right place), and he was asked to submit an additional form. Of course, copy of this additional form was included in the letter.

Forwarding forms to the correct department, providing a copy of an additional form -- these are ways that bureaucrats show that their love and care for humanity.

ZC at elusive lucidity states:

To perceive a historical progression of forms presents itself as a problem to be constructed through space.  Bureaucracy would aim to pulverize this impulse, eliminate the perceptual pathways for conceiving of these nodes.

Total nonsense.  Without bureaucracy, there would be no historical progression of forms.

The Nerdy Redneck offers photographic evidence of bureaucrats going above and beyond what is strictly necessary.  Again, such behavior is more common than is commonly recognized.

MIX 106.3 in Canberra, Australia, is creating a "Men of the Public Service" pinup calendar.  With commendable public spirit, MIX 106.3's Cam and Lisa are doing this to "change the way the rest of Australia looks at Canberra and the public service."   This great initiative deserves to be replicated around the world.   Moreover, to advance gender equity and bureaucratic appreciation, every office in every bureaucracy should be required under personnel regulations to display a "Men of the Public Service" pinup calendar.

Nick at The Mexican Year recognizes that graduate coordinators are more that just a "human appendix of the [academic] bureaucracy." In addition to functioning as "an early warning system for sick building syndrome," graduate coordinators know a lot about procedures in the academic-bureaucratic complex.

That's why I’m knocking on the door of Tammy-Sue, the graduate coordinator for my department.  She’s shoehorned into one of the “small” offices as they’re euphemistically called, really just a broom closet with a sealed window on one end and a nameplated door on the other.   There’s barely room for her to turn sideways to welcome me.  Limpid too-black hair dangles in front of her tortoiseshell glasses, and her merle turtleneck sweater seems like a bad choice given the greenhouse effect in her office.  But that’s her deodorant’s problem, not mine.

Tammy-Sue is a fine example of the many bureaucrats struggling valiantly to do their jobs in hot, confining circumstances.

Arnold Kling at EconLog declares:

I created a list of entrepreneurial temperaments and found that when I reversed them--creating an "anti-entrepreneur"--the resulting personality is in fact a typical bureaucrat, colorless and rigid.

Bureaucrats are much different from entrepreneurs, and, in many cases, bureaucrats are much better employees than are entrepreneurs.  But the assertion that bureaucrats are colorless is absurd and offensive.  Mr. Kling, who writes a bland monochrome blog with nary a color image, provides a paradigm of colorlessness.  The Carnival of Bureaucrats, in contrasts, displays for the whole world bureaucrats' exquisite appreciation for coloring.   Mr. Kling might become more knowledgeable if he spent more time with bureaucrats.

That's all for this month's Carnival of Bureaucrats. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month's carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

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