it hurts to have read at the time i did, knowing that examples of 'reducing bureaucracy' are either further additions in organizational patterns or maximized gutting—both are interminably painful for so many. they're horrifically terrible ways of going about improvement; unfortunately all anyone can do is small precedents upon slight updates to move the needle in the right direction.

losses of bureaucratic means are the common sense 'fixes' that do the opposite; they forecast a muddling of terms and reinforcements and checks that ensure a stable (if mind-meltingly slow and cumbersome) map. as graeber writes, there is no abundantly human element to any bureaucratic process; that's exactly what makes it work as it does, even if it doubly scuttles any imagination it runs into. the only imaginal feelings gleaned are in what the end means for you, not the throughway you dealt with to get there.

at least i'm glad that there's never any pretext; the writing never says that it wants to find how to fix it, just that that system's omnipresence is explainable, and here's why. it gives a lot of merit to why we do love bureaucracy. it brings some weird, uncanny comfort to 'professional life' that keeps things consistent, that allows a separation of action and intent and personality between the 'real' you and this 'manufactured' self, drowned in forms and sheets. it deserves its place in that way, somewhat, but it's amazing at stretching competent tasks through incompetent lenses. maybe there should be a sense of life in the things that we do; maybe bureaucracy is what helps prop up, in developed countries, the work that has no place to be offloaded, that must be maintained either as capital façade to keep cogs oiled, or to maintain still-unjust power relations... or both, and so much more.

getting rid of that rulebook for the sake of life and thrill in inhuman systems isn't the exact answer; not having the forced order or incomprehensible aid documents, and instead face-to-face, personal agreements may improve the state we're all in. but bureaucracy is so baked in now that sanding any minor aspects down would create gaps within many of the guards placed for people that need that help or protection (even if it only helps in the slightest, most patronizing of ways).

the fact that this book gives little sense of knowing exactly where to go, what to do about the whole matter of it, and instead simply stating its quirks, its supreme failures, and its forced essentiality that makes it so ever-present, makes the statements feel cutely similar. a statement of intent, of what it is that which we care so little for yet interact with constantly.

it's a beautiful little present in the shape of a form-monologue. there is so little gained once it's filed away, but at least there was a little treat, a little something to hang onto for a minute, to see where it takes you. the anecdotes—those connections to past and present—they're seemingly random; they jut out oddly and etch randomly into the page without a pattern, just as it should be. it mirrors the kind of imagination that feels so innocently game-y that it later advocates for and speaks on. in describing a form this way, of tangential spills, it makes something prettier out of a thing we can't ever truly escape from. which seems like exactly what should really happen to that kind of structure... and all we can do. just try to smile and make it all a bit sillier.