Put not your trust in princes, bureaucrats or generals, they will plead expedience while spilling your blood from a safe distance.
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Any attempt at a rational discussion of the economic realities of government-controlled medical care is almost certain to run up against the trump card of the political left: The Poor. The image that is often invoked is that of the elderly poor, forced to choose between food and medical treatment. Who could be so heartless as to abandon them to the vagaries of the free market? This has proved to be a very effective political strategy for extending government power, not only over medical care but also over housing and other sectors of the economy.The phoniness of this argument becomes apparent the moment you suggest that money be set aside specifically for dealing with the special problems of the poor, rather than bringing whole sectors of the economy under the dominance of politicians, bureaucrats and judges. The amount of money needed to take care of the poor is often some minute fraction of what sweeping new government programs cost. But, while big government liberals are willing to use the poor as human shields in their political battles, their more basic strategy is to proclaim that everyone has a right to some basic need that they want the government to provide. As a matter of practical politics, programs for the poor alone do not have as large a constituency as programs to give everybody some benefit, so that we can all have the illusion of getting something for nothing
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You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
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The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
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Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall
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Modern war has decimated many a country; but it has always spawned millions of bureaucrats. They fatten on shortages and thrive on trouble. Peace can never offer such opportunities for exercising petty tyrannies, using red tape to regiment the individual and making life generally unpleasant.
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I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike-and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two-are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.
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Guidelines for bureaucrats: When in charge; ponder; When in trouble; delegate; When in doubt; mumble.
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Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise -- bureaucrats.
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Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.
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Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.
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The difference between management and administration(which is what the bureaucrats used to do exclusively) is the difference between choice and rigidity.
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More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.
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