Bureaucratic Failure

Three of most widely-covered recent news narratives revolve around the same fundamental issue: the failure of bureaucratic institutions to meet challenges involving their basic missions.

The British Navy, a force that embodies the term "legendary", was taken by surprise and humiliated by a militia in speedboats. Virginia Tech proved itself, despite years of warnings, unable to provide the minimal level of security necessary for the safety of its faculty and student body. The war on terror, worst of all, is hobbled by bureaucratic strictures and habits of mind.

What these problems have in common - apart from being disasters of various magnitudes - is that they are all bureaucratic in nature. The rules and habits by which each of the organizations operate came in conflict with events, and rather than adapting or reacting or even hollering for help, each of the organizations involved fell apart.

"The British Navy, a force that embodies the term "legendary", was taken by surprise and humiliated by a militia in speedboats."

A small contingent of the British Navy with side arms and in rubber boats were taken prisoner by a superior force of Iranian militia in several high speed patrol boats armed with 0.50 caliber machine guns and RPG's

...while their heavily armed parent vessel, HMS Cornwall, stood by helplessly, as its captain frantically radioed the Admiralty for instructions on what to do.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing. If you have been living in a world where outcomes are everything, you may have a very hard time understanding bureaucratic thinking or practices.

Thomas Sowell

What kind of people are attracted to, and stay with bureaucratic institutions? Having attracted, and kept people who like beurocratic institutions, and the institution being in fact a bureaucracy, what nonperformance can be expected? Further, compare private bureaucracies, like General Motors, vs governmental bureaucracies like the Department of Education, or the Defense department. The private bureaucracy will be punished by the private market, the governmental goes on forever.

Take the CIA. Tenet. Deutch that loved using his CIA filled laptop to accesses Russian and mainland Chinese porn sites. Well, I sure the director had Norton. Anyways, the CIA didn’t know or not know about WMD. Didn’t have any real access or incite to Sadams Iraq. Didn’t know about Iraq invading Kuwait. (Kudos to the NSA, those useless dolts) The CIA didn’t see the Iron Curtian coming down, nor goint up in the ‘60s. The CIA thought that the East German economy was as big as West Germany. Any tourist to Berlin knew otherwise. The CIA performance in Vietnam, failure to see the Chinese coming in the Korean war. The start of the Korean war. The Bay of Pig failure....

Further, most of these bureaucracies are staffed with people directly from 20 plus years of being in educational bureaucracies. A perfect storm of garbage in, garbage out. It is too bad that we had only the choice of GW Bush. He shows the same passivity in firing people as his very nice father. I don't know if other than Rumsfield he has ever fired anybody. Well, it's nice to be liked. Meanwhile between GW's passivity and the Democrats and of course out real rulers the administrative dictatorship, we get a good tucking to everyday. But fairly, this is what Americans want. Old story.

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