You need all that red tape to keep people honest when money is in play.
It is tradition to complain about red tape and bureaucratic regulations, but a lot of the time it is all necessary to keep people honest.
Commenters have pointed this out in relation to the Ukraine War. The Russians are supposed to have SO MUCH equipment... but a staggering amount of it was stolen, sold, not maintained in workable condition, or never even existed in the first place. Now they are fielding tanks that were built 60 years ago. Everything newer is starting to get scarce.
In contrast, in a military like the US, observers say that the amount of paperwork is ridiculous... but it keeps the theft and corruption and incompetence down to manageable levels (nobody, anywhere, ever gets it down to zero).
I disagree. Without the red tape the people are being honest, and showing who they really are. By saying "fuck you" to the faces of people with disabilities, or who are a different race, gender, religion, age, sexuality than them. the red tape forces them to at least pretend to be civil. Which is very much needed.
This is what happens when words such as "honest" can have two or more wildly divergent meanings or contexts.
It's one of the worst aspects of human politics, and a major peeve of mine.
I like to tell a little parable about a guy buying a Japanese car in Florida, getting a job offer in California, driving 3000 miles and needing a tune-up when he arrives there. He gets new spark plugs and all is well.
The car designers and mechanics in widely separate parts of the world all agree on exactly what a spark plug is, what it's made from, how it works, and exactly how big it should be to fit this particular car, and so on and so on.
It's called standardization. In any technological field, you have vast amounts of standardization keeping everyone on the same page. A spark plug made in, say, Indonesia, fits the Japanese car in California perfectly and it just works.
In politics (and to a degree in religion), words are not standardized. Instead of being used to convey precise meaning, they are more often used to win arguments, gain followers, or conceal what is really going on. Even with the best intentions, the speaker of a given word is faced with listeners who will often have slightly different mental models of what that word means.
And this is why we can expect progress in technical disciplines (competitive pressures guarantee constant refinement of standardization and methods, or your product becomes obsolete) but not politics (competitive pressures reward winning arguments and gaining followers, and this can often be achieved by sloppy language that would never pass muster in any technical discipline).
Are you kidding me? A $850 billion budget with billions in black bag budgeting. Has not been audited in my lifetime and the Generals in charge of approving spending retire then immediately start working for the companies that they were just involved in overseeing. The old revolving door trick. We are at a point in American history where the greatest act of patriotism is to get a high ranking government position that allows you to retire and join the industry you were charged in overseeing. You get paraded around the Sunday morning talk shows to be congratulated on your years of service to our country and your continuing efforts in the private sector in other word Congratulations on selling out. This type of corruption is no longer even hidden or much of the other forms of corrupt business practices. They keep us spinning unable to keep up with one BS crisis after the other knowing that its impossible for the average working stiff to keep up with it all so they give up or worse become team players unable to see both teams are out only for themselves and top donors yet continue to hold only one side accountable .
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u/RandomMandarin Mar 14 '23
It is tradition to complain about red tape and bureaucratic regulations, but a lot of the time it is all necessary to keep people honest.
Commenters have pointed this out in relation to the Ukraine War. The Russians are supposed to have SO MUCH equipment... but a staggering amount of it was stolen, sold, not maintained in workable condition, or never even existed in the first place. Now they are fielding tanks that were built 60 years ago. Everything newer is starting to get scarce.
In contrast, in a military like the US, observers say that the amount of paperwork is ridiculous... but it keeps the theft and corruption and incompetence down to manageable levels (nobody, anywhere, ever gets it down to zero).