A bureaucracy is a machine that only needs humans as functionaries. It repeats the same motions in the same way without any change, in service to the god of efficiency. It demands work and loyalty from the pawns it conscripts because the highest goal of a bureaucracy is self-sustenance and preservation.

Bureaucratic change cannot come from within any more than a machine can self-assess and improve. Machines don’t change, they only break and wear out or run out of fuel. Bureaucratic change can only come from without since those owing fealty to the machine are no longer capable of independent action with respect to their god of process.

… diary note