Is Bureaucracy Killing Civilization?

Bibliography: * means book was really important for this video
The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham**
Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quiggley
The Evolution of Civilizations by Carroll Quigely
The Old Regime and the French Revolution by De Toqueville
A New World Begins by Poptkin
Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis**
Strategy by Lawrence Freedman
On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis
Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler
War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat
Sex and Power in History by Amaury de Riencourt
The Soul of China by Amaury de Riencourt
The Ruling Classes by Gaetano Mosca
The Fate of Empires by Hubbard
The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russel
Why Nations Fail by Robinson and Acemoglu
A Secular Age by Charles Taylor
The Gulag Archipelago Solzenitsyn
The Total State by Auron Macintyre*
The Revolt of the Elites by Christopher Lasch
The Storm before the Calm by George Friedman*
Rise of the West by McNeil
On Politics by Aristotle
The Soul of India by Amaury de Riencourt
The Sea and Civilization by Lincoln Payne
The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
Reason and Faith by Sam Gregg
The Shaping of America by Meinig
Caesar and Christ by Will Durant
The Life of Greece by Will Durant
Destiny Disrupted Tamim Ansary
Empires of the Atlantic World by Elliot
The 13th Century World System by Abu Laughed
Colonial Empires from the 18th century by Fieldhouse
War What is it good for by Ian Morris
The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman
Regime Change by Deenan
Atrocities by Matthew White
The Road to Serfdom by Hayek

[RickSanchez]

YES. I bought a house this week. The power was on and worked fine. When i went to change the account to my name, the electrical company sent someone out. There was a loose bracket for the Meter and they told us we needed to "repair" it... by repair, they meant screw 2 bolts back in. So long story short. The county wanted me to pull a permit ($300) and wait a week for an inspection, before they would tell the electrical company they could turn the power on. They wanted my wife and newborne to not have power for a week over "needing a permit to confirm 2 bolts were screwed back in" its fking ridiculous how asinine basic things have become over this sht.

[IntermissionForBunny]

My man's squeezing as many videos in as possible before that civil war breaks out

[trueblueclue]

Don't ask a woman her age
Don't ask a man how much he makes
Don't ask a bureaucrat where most of the money for that multimillion dollar project went

[apexliberty]

The bureaucracy in New York is so bad that they broke into a guy home to kill his pet squirrel.

[mrbean]

Does anyone else want to see a WhatifAltHist book list?!?
Seriously, how do you find these gems! My wife and I are homeschooling our kids, and a book list from you could be instrumental for a real education.

[Idiodyssey]

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." -Oscar Wilde

[stuartwaldrip]

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
T. Sowell

[belroise]

I'm from Spain. My country is suffering a disaster with hundreds of deaths and thousands of dissapeared people and the goverment doesn't want to mobilize the army and is trying to convince the volunteers that bring food and water to the victims to stay away from the disaster so they can manage the situation. Four d*mn days after the floods and only 500 service men could come to help. Also, the meteorologic agency was aware of what was going to happen 10-12 hours before, but the goverment didn't want to declare the alarm to pass the responsability to the local administration. Everything feels like a joke right now. Sorry for my bad english.

[intarsienschrankzwetschgen]

Decades ago I watched a movie called "Brazil" where a handyman was enemy of the state no.1 just because he repaired things as a freelancer bypassing all the paperwork. I found this very weird back in the day and thought maybe the authors shifted a problematic topic into a more satirical context. The longer our society progresses I think they were spot on. Beaurocracy IS the tyrant.

[Kurai_]

Bureaucracy just killed a guy's pet squirrel and racoon for shits and giggles

[phakeplayer]

I was a coordinator at a local YMCA. Bureaucrats got paid $100k for being a vp and doing next to nothing while I made $38k to run a department. Getting new equipment was like pulling teeth. I left after 6 months

[primetimeseal]

Why are we as grown men letting kindergarten teachers boss us around. Our ancestors would be ashamed

[Planeet-Long]

29:05 Dude, Argentina is THE FIRST victim of the managerial revolution. It was actually a rich country that managed itself into decline. There is a reason why many Western Europeans refer to EU policies as "Argentinification".

[Bloxicorn]

This video had me thinking about my childhood. You're so right boomers have grown up with a really perverted childhood, where neighbors would yell at you for playing in your own yard and I got the CPS called on me when I was at the library by myself. Schools felt like prisons where you couldn't go to the bathroom or walk around the cafeteria without permission.
The most free I felt was when my friends and I found an abandoned couch in an empty lot and turned that into our base. Literally trash in the middle of nowhere, was more fun than any parental set up playmates or supervised playgrounds.

[TheMeepster]

Bureaucracy is the main reason housing is so expensive. It the last 5 years especially, the little bullshit regulations have gotten out of control.
It cost twice as much and takes 3 times as long to build things as it should.

We put a small addition on my grandparents house last year so they could move their bedroom downstairs. On the foundation, we literally had to stop every 4th row of bricks and wait a week for an inspector.
There was a lot more in between, but once it was done, they wanted to pressure test a house that was originally built in the 40s.

[MillardFeelmore]

In a modern American university, 80% - 90% of the staff has nothing to do with educating the paying customer. Half of that staff is soley there because it's required bureaucracy by law. It is that way in hospitals as well. Up to half of some hospitals now days is office space, required by law. It is destroying us. In this modern era, bureaucracies are the shackles in which we've placed upon ourselves.

[xeroxyde]

I live in France, and the bureaucracy is, and have been, a nightmare for us here. Here, you can't build a shed in your backyard without declaring it and asking for a permit. You can't slaughter your own meat and sell or give it to your neighbor. You can't build a swimming pool without declaring it either. And the government actually deployed drones to periodically take aerial photos and detect undeclared pools using AI. This is not a joke, you can check it out. You have to run through so much red tape to do anything in this country. It's actually depressing. Even a process as simple as getting a new id card can take months.

[akumaking]

Short answer:
YES!
Longer answer:
OF COURSE IT IS!

[outwestaz]

48 years at a desk and you put it in a way that makes me feel, what the heck was I thinking. You are getting better and better and I have recommended you to many others. Concise and clean and filled with substance, thanks

[tuckerprice]

I liked your reference to DMV employees at the end. The DMV is the epitome of bureaucratic hell, as was brilliantly satirized by the Simpsons in their golden age. Patty and Selma were perfect DMV employees. My favourite line of theirs: "Some days, we don't let the line move at all. We call those 'weekdays.'"