The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

process of accreditation, usually entailing many years of higher education. Persons in authority have had to jump through hoops of fire to achieve their lofty posts—and feel disinclined to pay attention to anyone who has not done the same. Lasting authority, however, resides in institutions rather than in the persons who act and speak on their beha

The surest sign of a sick organization is ever-expanding rules and regulations; its terminal disease is ever increasing compulsion to enforce them.

To see “outside” an existing system is like being a stagehand trying to force a dialogue with a character in a play. It breaches a convention that helps keep the system functioning. Every social order incorporates among its key taboos the notion that people living in it should not think about how it will end and what rules may prevail in the new sy

The famously irreverent Boomers were the first generation of Americans born in the shadow of the new managerial society. The “New Left” counterculture of the 1960s was, in turn, the first attempt to break the shackles of bureaucracy and conformity. New Left radicals condemned the “bewildering dependence” of Americans on “inaccessible castles wherei