Re: [tlug] From an enthusiast TLUG follower

["Jens John" <lists@example.com>]

On Fri, 28 Aug 2020, at 02:31, Stuart Luppescu wrote:
> On Thu, 2020-08-27 at 17:18 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> > The difference between politicians and bureaucrats is not the absence
> > of heart or presence of cruelty.  The difference is that the
> > bureaucrat keeps her job by being honest and consistent about it, and
> > the politician keeps his by being dishonest and inconsistent about it.
> 
> Yes, that's a reasonable point. But my objection is the rigid, inhumane
> method of enforcing those rules, without exception. (You call it
> "honest and consistent"; I call it "inflexible, inhumane and rigid".)

It's a matter of perspective, but it is generally preferable to have a bureaucracy that works just like that. At scale, every bureaucratic case cannot afford to be a trial; officers need to judge fast and in compliance with a guiding rule set that takes off the overhead, which is the only thing that allows the process to work at all at acceptable speeds and reasonable degrees of fairness. As soon as appeasement and feelings become the goal in a bueaucracy, it ends up flexible and unfair.