Some more (almost) random chatting :)

… because as societies get larger and more diverse, the social and logistical needs they have to meet increase exponentially, as do the demands for at least some degree of accountability from the ruling class.

People have the misconception that bureaucracy makes things *more* complicated – in practice, it does just the opposite, by compressing and streamlining complexity so that *people can't see it.* Every once in a while, someone gets close enough to see the civil servant behind the curtain, turning the wheels, and it leaves them unimpressed or angry because they feel like it's a disruption in the illusion that society drapes them in.

This is the paradox of being a civil servant: the only time people notice your existence is when something goes wrong. They sit on the train during a delay, thinking, "I can't believe this, I'm ten minutes late! How dare those track workers be so slow!" But when the trains run on time, their minds are elsewhere. Never mind the track workers doing emergency night repairs because of a discovery made on a spot inspection; never mind the bureaucrats who count the screws and the bolts and the pieces of rail and put in the order for more spares at appropriate junctures; never mind the policy experts who fine-tune 900 page pieces of legislation so that we have a clearly established set of regulations on when to buy the spares and how many to keep in the storage room.

Bureaucracies are human creations, they are imperfect – they hide corruption, inefficiency, and stupidity. But those things happen without bureaucracy, too, and arguably, they happen much more. The thing is, bureaucracies also keep records of their own problems, in triplicate, so that it can be rooted out and the associated problems can be solved.