Bureaucracies Suck at Everything

Michael Ziebarth

We let bloated incompetent bureaucratic institutions control huge parts of our lives and the tolerance for this ineptitude must stop. This includes this university, local and state governments and worst of all the federal government.  These bureaucracies grow rapidly to a point where they are unmanageable and can barely serve their original intended purpose.  

The results of letting institutions get out of control like this are quite clear.  First, they cannot run efficiently and therefore take massive amounts of money to operate while producing quite small results.  Second, bureaucrats are never held accountable for incompetency or failures.  Lastly, these bureaucracies cannot be reigned in while their limitless amount of people are free to write rules and regulations that continue to exacerbate the problem. 

This is known all to well to students at this university and others across the country.  The number of administrators grow rapidly while tuition rates skyrocket all while faculty to student contact remains the same. With constant new administrative positions the cost of educating students rises dramatically while education quality is kept constant. 

If students have a problem with the school, there could be several different departments to blame for just one little issue. All the administrators can easily shove the blame on to someone else so the responsible party will never be held to account.  In addition, the problem will never be fixed since it overlaps between departments and all changes needs approval from dozens of different people.   

For example, if a student group was working with the school to get a room big enough for a giant speaking event and they could not get one big enough, the students would not know who to blame.  It could be a variety of departments who have control over classroom and building management as well as public safety on campus. It could also be internal orders from higher ups. Those students will never find out and no one will ever be held accountable for such incompetence.

This is also clear at the Department of Motor Vehicles in states across the country.  Going to the DMV is something everyone has to suffer through at some point.  While in line, everyone just thinks about how much better the place would operate if it were run by 6 year olds.  Incompetent DMV employees always stick around, the process is never improved and the DMV barely serves its purpose.  This is how most public agencies run but the DMV is the most hated since everyone has to suffer under their incompetence. 

Multiple series of books could be written about how awful the federal government particularly the executive branch agencies.  Each department is bloated, inefficient and costs the American taxpayer far more than it should.  This is a case however where it is probably good that they are all incompetent morons since it would be quite horrifying if we actually got the 4 trillion dollars worth of government that we pay for every year.  

Investigations of wrongdoing in the cabinet agencies take years and no one is ever held accountable. Even if they are found to be corrupt, they are typically just shifted to a less relevant department.  As we’ve seen with the impeccable crew that’s investigating the Trump team, no matter how badly the bureaucrat screwed up, they always seem to have a full pension upon retirement.

All the programs these departments oversee are riddled with waste, fraud and abuse and rarely meet their purpose. They all cost too much and we do not have the money to pay for this obese pathetic mess anymore. 

Unfortunately, these inept bureaucrats have important jobs to do.  On the federal level, these institutions oversee tax collection, federal criminal investigations, healthcare for millions of people, and countless other crucial services.  On the state and local level bureaucrats oversee the public education system and infrastructure including water, utilities and transportation.  

These are crucial services and most of them should be in the hands of the government but we must demand better. These agencies must cut all unnecessary personnel and be as nimble as possible.  Any agencies that could be privatized, should be.

Also we must stop asking government or the university administration to solve every last problem we have.  They suck at everything and make our lives horrible when they step in and do anything.  Problems need to be handled as locally as possible, even among individuals when possible. 

These steps would make these entities more responsive to the people, while costing less and serving the people more effectively than the mediocrity we put up with now.