Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle (1996)

 

Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle (1996), which is, that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the one place where they can do the least damage, management. Adam’s  analysis of what ails the modern bureaucracy, public or private, is accurate. The net effect is therefore quite depressing. The main difference between public and private money wasters is that the former are called to account, since the (privately owned) media love to show up government’s sins. But they downplay or ignore the same events when perpetrated by some privately paid idiot. But there’s only one wallet: We pay for all money-wasting mistakes and thefts, public and private, one way or another. (That’s my principle).
     Management is a necessary evil; it’s a direct result of the size of the enterprise. The larger an organisation, the more effort it expends on managing itself. (That’s my principle, too). Hence the largest enterprises, governments and multi-national corporations, suffer from the same inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and inertia.
     Then there is the inefficiency of the market, which responds to people’s desires rather than to their needs. The reason is of course that we, as Adams points out, are all idiots. I wonder if he’s aware of the Greek derivation of the word. In ancient Greece, an idiot was a man focussed on his private concerns instead of participating in public life. We now live in a culture that not only thinks this is an OK attitude, which would be bad enough, but believes that self-centredness be the essence of a free, democratic society, which is not only absurd but appalling, and in the long run destructive.
     I enjoyed the book for its wit, its pithy style (Adams is a natural aphorist), and for its hapless central character, Dilbert. But that pleasure's a high price to pay for a depressing insight. *** (2007)

Update 2013: After serving on the Blind River District Health Centre Board for several years, I’m convinced that bureaucracy is a side effect of size. Smaller organisations are more effective, and therefore more efficient, because most management can be done in ad-hoc meetings face to face, and because the teams are small enough to be able to change as needed very quickly. Also, everyone can have a pretty good overview of the whole operation. Size is wasteful, but it feeds egos.

Edited 2023-04-29