BUREAUCRACY

There are some pictures here (or here) showing graphically the sort of bureaucracy that the Left are forever wishing upon us.

There is a classic example of bureaucracy at work near where I live in Brisbane. The local authority (Brisbane City Council) builds boardwalks and the like in seaside areas like Wynnum using ordinary steel bolts to hold the structures together -- completely ignoring the fact that any outdoor structure, let alone one exposed to salty air, is very prone to attack by rust. So the bolts will have rusted out in a few years and all the work will have to be re-done -- doubling the cost. The morons do not even protect the exposed steel with paint -- and something as simple and old-fashioned as using galvanized bolts in the first place is clearly way beyond their ken. Anybody in private enterprise who behaved so stupidly would not last five minutes but in the Left-controlled Brisbane City Council you can be sure that nobody will be held accountable when the structures begin to wobble.

See "When 'Mother' is a Bureaucracy," by Wendy McElroy for more on bureaucratic irresponsibility and negligence -- in this case using little babies in New York as guinea pigs.

What government is good at: "We often complain about how slow government can be. But there's a teenager in Arizona who can tell you that swift government has its downside. On February 23, the Arizona Republic printed a fascinating story about how Christian Alf set up his own after-school business rat-proofing his neighbors' houses. Two days later that same newspaper printed a follow-up: the state of Arizona had put young Mr. Alf out of business, citing him with two separate violations of state law."

There is no guarantee that capitalists will be intelligent but it is broadly true that the smarter ones will get the gravy. An amusing instance I know of in that connection is the practice in many Australian Real Estate offices of having a meeting for all staff on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Buyers who ring at that time are told that there are no salespeople available to assist them. I imagine that 90% of buyers do as I do on such occasions -- ring another agent. I can think of at least two occasions where the next agent I rang in fact sold me something. So the wankers who thought that their meeting was more important than selling anything in effect had several thousand dollars offered to them on a plate and knocked it back! Not smart. They'd do well as government employees, though.

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