What Do I Mean By “Bureaucracy”?

My favorite recent word, apparently, is “bureaucracy.” In writing, I’ve used it lately to describe everything from how corporations and governments ration health care, to how banks strangle locally controlled communities. In speech, I’ve used it to explain why capitalism, communism, and socialism are all equally degrading to human spirits. But this week, when I used the word “bureaucratic” to describe how adults make friends, I have realized I need to define the word better.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines bureaucracy as “a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives.” This definition is useful but, like most dictionary definitions, it sands away controversy and nuance. For example, the “rather than by elected representatives” tag implies bureaucracy is a degenerate form of democracy. And the “system of government” qualification suggests bureaucracy only describes states, not other complex institutions.

When I taught at the university, I saw bureaucracy applied to aspects of teaching: course goals written by people outside the discipline, mandatory clauses added to the syllabus by lawyers, and top-level leadership appointed by government without having classroom experience. I can only imagine what public school teachers endure under No Child Left Behind and its successor, Common Core. I’ve heard horror stories of mandatory curricula and standardized tests written by God alone knows who.

In the labor pool, I’ve witnessed site “managers” with no autonomy, lugging binders full of rules written by somebody up the hierarchy, with goals they’re required to accomplish, and regulations they’re required to enforce. Schedules get written by office workers, schedules with no consideration for contingencies like time lost to weather. (In a world wracked by global warming.) Production quotas get written by actuaries who have studied assembly line schematics, but never worked the line.

That’s just my personal experience. I’ve heard similar stories from other fields: a former police cadet who quit the academy when she realized the brass cared more about enforcing regulations than guarding justice. A theatre director who got a day job because he discovered the board cared more about appeasing donors than creating art. A pastor, told to adjust his preaching the gospel to smooth relations with the episcopate. “Bureaucracy” means rules win over honesty.

For me, “bureaucracy” means a system of control where a layer of operatives are appointed to enforce rules, but given no discretion over them. Obeying rules becomes paramount, regardless of whether obedience serves the purpose for which the rules were written. Anybody who’s ever been stuck at an unreasonably long red light at two in the morning knows that sometimes, ignoring the rules is the reasonable choice. But bureaucracy enforces rules because they are rules.

Admittedly, the complexity of living in a technological society with a large population makes some level of bureaucracy necessary. The long supply chains needed to produce computers or diabetic syringes means somebody has to govern the transport and assembly, and the corporate nabobs responsible for top-level decision-making lack the time and skills to do this. So professionals get appointed because they know how to make the necessary decisions to accomplish these goals with minimum delay.

Problems arise when corporations, governments, and other institutions offload such massive responsibilities onto their professionals, that they come to dominate the organization’s time and budget. A recent Reuters headline read: “More than a third of U.S. healthcare costs go to bureaucracy.” Economic historian Jerry Z. Muller writes that government and economy write so many rules for accountability, that institutions have to hire entire staffs to enforce them. Dollar-value economic gains vanish into the system.

So what do I mean when I describe friendships as bureaucratic? Social media has become awash in supposed rules like “Dump toxic friends immediately” and “Only keep friends who lift you up,” rules written by people who don’t know you and your circumstances. Just like CEOs and Congress Critters, these rules writers craft regulations somebody else has to enforce. And that someone is you: you’re both the subject of strict behavior policing, and the police.

Bureaucracy, by its nature, is always blind to real-world circumstances. It always values strict adherence over experience and discretion. Bureaucracy doesn’t permit you, no matter how wise you are, to make informed judgements; compliance, ultimately, is its only principle. And again, in small doses, it’s often necessary. But when bureaucracy becomes its own moral justification, and I believe in our society it has, then bureaucracy becomes anti-human. Then humans develop a moral obligation to refuse.