Winding Sheet

Of Bureaucracy

What if everyone needed something, something important, but the supply was limited?  What if everyone expected it, considered it an inalienable right?  What if there was no morally correct way to deny them?

Governments face this dilemma frequently, but Nature never has this problem.  In Nature, each gets what each can, and the ones who do not, well, you know.  This observation is not new, and it may be as old as governance itself.  The solution has generally been to create a maze of protocols and procedures that require individuals to perform a gauntlet of tasks in order to acquire that expected something.  Many protocols and procedures across many areas of governance made accountability difficult or even impossible to isolate.  As a result, those with the will and wherewithal to accomplish the tasks and traverse the gauntlet got their something, while others, well, you know.  Such is life.