Do you like bureaucracy?
Does anyone?
And yet we have so much of it. Aliens, too. You would not believe the complexity and spread of the Oolian Directorate civil service. I have it on good authority that some departments have more than 80 layers in the org chart and it takes a couple centuries to study enough to pass the civil service exam. Getting even the simplest request through their system--especially as an outsider--requires dozens of approvals, and any single individual in the chain can stop your request and make you go through a multi-phase appeals process if you even want to think about eventually getting it.
Delightful. What about the Koraxians?
Oh, just a unitary dictatorship for them. Korath would give orders to his closest pod-brothers and they would filter on down the ranks. Their slime-based telepathy kept things pretty efficient. You couldn't exactly hide things from him unless you were physically distant, and even then he could just have someone hunt you down if you went rogue. Yes, the punishment was always execution. No surprise, right?
Why are we talking about this?
Well, why does everybody have bureaucracies? Nobody likes them, so what's their purpose?
A system is what it does. A bureaucracy slows things down and stops a lot of things from happening. It's a brake, I guess.
Exactly. It's hard to be too disruptive to a system if you're obstructed at every turn. And even the things you can get through, they'll happen slowly enough that everyone will have time to adjust to them, rather than freaking out about a sudden, shocking change.
Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
It limits damage, too. At least, so long as there are controls in place to make sure no one can simply blow everything up. That's also why bureaucracies tend to be layered and gain even more layers as time goes on. They calcify the current state of affairs and make changing it too burdensome to bother with.
Am I supposed to like this, or no?
Depends on what you want. If you want stability, this is good. If you want dynamism and change, it's bad.
Stability can be good. Change can be bad. And vice versa.
You're not wrong. That's kind of the downfall of such systems, isn't it? They're value-neutral, in that they don't ensure anything particularly good or bad happens, they just ensure the process is followed, on the assumption that if you follow the process, everything will be OK. A well-intended but flawed premise.
Yeah, I took Intro to Organizational Behavior, I know all this.
How do you change a system that's no longer allowing beneficial changes, then?
Break it?
Now, now. You're not allowed to do that. Try again.
Convince people to listen to you.
Persuasion, yeah. Do you think that should start at the top, or the bottom?
What do you mean?
Should you first try to persuade leadership, or rank and file?
Both?
Yup. You can't get away with one or the other. You have to get everybody to buy in. But that's not hard once you get some key people on board, is it?
A couple leaders, some of the more respected and senior front line employees...
Yeah, next thing you know, people are ready to change. So what stops them?
Self-interest. People aren't going to want changes that will disrupt their lives too much. If someone's been doing the same job the same way for 20 years, they aren't likely to want it changing on them.
And most people don't want to wait a whole generation to see some change happen.
That's for sure. Lots of changes I'd like to see yesterday.
Let me just call up a timeship, then...
Can you?
No, I told you I can't, anymore.
Just checking.
Now here's a fun one: how do you distinguish a system you can influence toward a positive outcome from one that's hostile and incapable of reform?
You'd look at the track record first, I figure. How often does anyone get decent change through that system? If the answer is "rarely" or "never," I'd say that's that. You have a system you can't save.
Right. So, why is it like this? Why do we build systems that end up becoming our enemy because they're no longer receptive to change?
Inertia? Once you start acting for self-preservation, it's easy to just keep doing that until that's the only priority.
Good guess. Let's do a fun analogy. What happens to predators if you feed them rather than making them hunt?
They become docile, I suppose. Probably get fat off the free food.
Do you think, given the choice, they'd want to give that up?
No.
And you see this everywhere you have a creature with material abundance and no natural threats. It gets used to that environment and doesn't want to see it change. Might even fight violently to keep it. But for the most part, they will expend the minimum effort to keep that situation going.
People in a bureaucracy block change because they each contribute a tiny bit of energy to the process of doing that, preserving their comfortable environment and preventing any disruption.
Do you think there's a deeper function than that?
Beats me. Everything life forms do in some way goes back to procreation, I guess. Propagation of the species.
And getting to sit around and pop out babies, so to speak, is a pretty nice deal.
Yeah. So what?
Well, I guess I'm saying complacency is bad, but we can't help but build structures that promote it. Being comfortable isn't bad. That's not what I'm saying. But being fat and happy isn't necessarily a permanent condition, either for an individual or a civilization. And if you aren't ready for that to be attacked, you aren't prepared to survive it. Bureaucracies basically protect that comfort from the inside. Theoretically, a military protects it from the outside, but it's hard to have an adequate military if everyone's incentives are to stay safe and comfortable, because most people will chose that when they can. Why wouldn't they, you know? Who chooses to suffer??
Is this a "soft men make hard times, hard times make hard men" speech I hear?
God, no. My point is more that there's a lot to be said for preparation and parallel structures. A change might not be possible now, but you should always be ready to seize the opportunity to implement it, when one arises. And one will always arise. Despite our best efforts, there is always going to be something that comes along and tips over the proverbial apple cart. And that's your chance to decide where things land. Bureaucracies don't respond well to sudden disruption, after all. They don't know how to handle it. Their job is to prevent it, but they can't do much about a change that's already started, and they struggle to multitask, too.
What's that about parallel structures?
If there's nothing you can do via official channels to make a change you want, if you get some like-minded people together you can maybe do a smaller scale version of it yourselves, without any official blessing. I'd distinguish between devolved and parallel structures, though. A devolved function is something that could be done higher up the chain of authority, but is delegated down instead. As an example, food pantries are almost always locally run by their community. They might depend on tax dollars and donations, but the key is that nobody is running them afar. So, that's a "devolved" function. A parallel structure... well, private schools are a prime example. There are already public schools. But some people don't like those, so they came up with private schools. Are those necessary? No. Do they serve a purpose for the people who create them? Clearly, or they wouldn't do it!
Whether a parallel structure is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder, though. But if you take a situation like a civil war, you have parallel structures all over the place. In a literal sense, different regions will have different, distinct militaries, each of which may be providing their own staff and services to the people in those areas, and at times they might overlap their zones of control, even competing with each other to prove to the populace who is offering the better deal. I am obviously romanticizing a little bit. Most of civil war is senseless killing; you get slightly more benevolent results from, I don't know, deregulating electric utilities.
You're so cynical sometimes.
All the time, you mean.
Sure. So... so what? What's the point of all this? You trying to make me jaded?
Could I even do that if I tried?
No way. I have too much young spark in me.
Give it time. Life will rub that right out.
We don't all have to become hopeless cynics like you.
Well, you tell me. How do you change things?
You don't give up and you don't take "no" for an answer. You keep fighting until they give you what you want, or they kill you.
You'll find a lot of people tried that and ended at the "they kill you" part.
And that's just how it is sometimes. You know what, I don't think you're as pessimistic as you make it seem. You spent how many years trying to change the future?
Yeah, but it didn't work.
But you're still here. You're telling me everything you've been through. I'm sure that's for a reason.
I'm just old and bored, Brynn.
Uh huh. If you say so. I think you don't like the idea of your drive for change dying with you. Maybe the problem is that you couldn't do it alone. I know you had "allies," but it seems to me like you were using them more than anything. You didn't really let them help you. You didn't let them be actual partners in your efforts. Maybe you regret that? Maybe you're saying the only thing that can counter a massive, faceless system designed to stand in your way is to get a bunch of other people together to help you fight it? And maybe you wish you'd done that instead of going it alone for so many years?
Hey, anything is possible.
I'm not hearing a denial.