Ode to the Functionaries
In the dreary buildings of the capitals, unsung heroes keep the Wheel of Administrivia grinding.
The despot is not a man. It is the Plan. The correct, realistic, exact plan, the one that will provide your solution once the problem has been posited clearly, in its entirety, in its indispensable harmony.
—James C. Scott, from Seeing Like a State
Between you and me, there are millions of middlemen. A third of every pie goes to feeding their metastasis. State your business. Stamp. Stamp. Date and sign. Into the database. Into the file cabinet. Here’s your copy.
I declare you legitimate in the eyes of the state, which has its own way of seeing.
That’ll be $125, please… Yes, on top of the taxes.
The Circumlocution Office thinks of itself as the Department of Solutions. It can fix anything by dint of largesse, numbered forms, and threats of compulsion.
quite reasonably asserts—First, one should ask:Do government authorities have a role in solving this problem at all?
Few bother to ask Edwin’s most reasonable question. The incentive is the institution. The institution is The Apparatus. The Apparatus is *our democracy.*
We must protect our democracy!
Most are busy dreaming up problems to solve, like systemic x or structural y, fighting for a permanent position in The Apparatus—or one of its tentacles, an NGO.
Once a functionary finds her office in the maze of halls, cubicles, and desks, between the marbled foyers and the file cabinets, she will be hard to dislodge—like a tick on an ass’s perineum or an academic with tenure.
Behold, my official badge!
One wonders whether functionaries are made or born. If they are made, what are the parents’ pathologies? If they are born, I can only wonder what Mother Nature and Daddy Darwin had in mind—that is, out of what evolutionary pressures the bureaucrat was formed. (Leave God out of it.)
How many functionaries does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None: They’re still waiting for the lightbulb requisition form to be approved by the oversight board.
Despite their ability to obstruct, complicate, and enervate, they are making a salary, plus benefits. They have mortgages to pay, mouths to feed, and pensions to absorb. But they’re vital.
Can’t you see each is part of the regime’s managerial mosaic?
Noble bureaucrat, unsung purveyor of paperwork, cycle through your forms with the speed and grace of a two-toed sloth. What labyrinths you construct! Your cryptic regs are the sheet music for a symphony of inaction. Each Stempel is a master stroke as you count the days before retiring early at our expense, doing just enough to keep the Wheel of Needless Administrivia grinding.
You were the perfect hire, thanks to D, E, and I. Forgive me, I have already forgotten your pronouns. And was it sir or ma’am? Ah, yes, there’s a training manual for that—the new department’s indispensable deliverable.
We marvel at your talent for transforming a simple task into a heroic odyssey. We bow our heads in your interminable queues.
Does your manager approve?
Does hers?
Does his?
What documents am I missing?
What signatures are needed?
Brutalist waiting rooms are sanctuaries for worshippers in the Church of State.
You, oh functionaries, are the gatekeepers of our dreams. No lightbulb gets screwed in without a permit. No hope is left unfiled in triplicate.
As death approaches, we pray you will mummify us in your red tape. Let not the greedy pine for their money. Let not the waiting wail for their time. Efficiency is evil. Deadweight loss is divine. And a third is for the greater good.
Thankfully, you have a Plan.
As wasteful as they are and as poetically as you remind us, I think, cynically, that perhaps they do serve a purpose, keeping the "system" stable with the current elites on top of it:
"The “waste” we see today is, for those within our regime, but the cost of solving the “alignment” problem of humans. Everyone with ability or wealth has to be bought off to keep them within the system, and yes, even it means creating a hundred thousand well-paid gender studies commissars or more generals than we’ve ever had in a real war, well, it’s just the cost of keeping them aligned with the direction of the rest of the regime. The system evolves layers of garbage wastefulness as a self-defensive measure against too much talent being aimless, and perhaps, interested in alternatives. Even the foreign waste serves the same purpose, keeping foreign regimes like those in Brussels, aligned to U.S. deep state values by making their elites align themselves with ours."
https://grainofwheat.substack.com/p/have-pity-on-the-poor-old-bureaucrat?r=1mcpmt
Really well written! I like the point about Public vs. Private salaries and how hard that is for private sector to complete and of course talent is sucked away from the private sector and into the functionaries positions. Thanks, I feel smarter every time I read your stuff and that's worth the price of admission.