How the bureaucratic mindset is taking over the world, from universities to the military, from healthcare to the state itself. It's all a scam, and the best we can do is focus on our own education and find places to publicly discuss these topics openly to learn how we can do better.

I. Bureaucracy Needs ProblemsI. Bureaucracy Needs Problems

Bureaucrats and administrators need things to do. They designed the system to benefit their network. The problem is that there are many, and they get bored, they try to occupy their well-paid wasted time creating problems they can solve. A clear example: being a dean in a university is not a real job. Deans don't teach. They don't do research. They are parasites finding the best way to suck value from the host they live on by. So when you have a bureaucracy, bureaucrats make problems for everyone in order to create solutions for everyone.

Twenty years ago in universities, but like in any other organisation, if you had a problem, you had to go talk to a superior because there was no one else to talk to. Nowadays you can talk to 20 or 30 different peers. Following up on the example of universities, you have the Dean of Student Affairs, the Dean of Faculty, who knows what other Dean of... They're all these useless offices you can go to.

How and why then do universities become bureaucracies? In the beginning, a university has to build its reputation. You work hard, you focus on teaching, you focus on research. But universities, like any other business, at some stage struggle to become a global brand due to an increase in competition. Once you become that global brand, the struggle ends. So the people in charge start engaging in rent-seeking behaviour. They take advantage of their position to make their life easier. They pass privileges to their friends, then to their children, and so on... for generations, sometime along centuries. The university starts to exist in order to empower these people at the expense of students and professors.

II. The Rent-Seeking SocietyII. The Rent-Seeking Society

Here's another dumb created-problem example. In 2020, a professor at the University of Southern California, Greg Patton, was teaching a business communication class. He was explaining Chinese filler words, the Chinese equivalent of "um" and "uh." The word is 那个, pronounced nèige or nàge. It sounds somewhat similar to an English slur, not the same, not even close really, but a bit similar.

Some black students who were not even in his class wrote a letter of complaint. If you read it, it sounds like a joke, like a prank. They said the professor used a "phonetic homonym of a racial derogatory term."

The administration could have ignored this because it was obviously ridiculous. Instead, the dean fired Patton from that class and announced: "It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalise, hurt, and harm the psychological safety of our students."

Why did he do that? Because he's trying to protect his job. He's trying to look good. He's trying to explain why he is the leader: because he protects everyone.

The data confirms what these stories illustrate. Here are the charts:

University of California, San Diego: Student Enrollment vs. Senior Management Growth

In this image by Andrew J. Mackay from his article UC Fall 2025 enrollment numbers reach record high, a line chart show student enrolment increasing slightly over the past decades while senior management, deans, and administrators explode upward. The management line is a steep hockey stick!

University Investment: Teaching (Blue) vs. Administration (Red), 1980–2020

This other chart from @A_Optically in reddit, show us the teaching investment (blue line) is flat to slightly declining. The administration (red line) shoots upward dramatically starting around 1990.

Illinois University System: Student Enrolment vs Manager Growth

Growth in administrative bloat is sucking up money that would otherwise go toward the classroom and tuition grants for low-income students in Illinois’ higher education system.

A bar chart from Illinois Policy's article Bloat expands as enrollment drops, tuition spikes in Illinois higher education showing student enrolment declining by 3%, while the number of managers massively increases in the same period.

Ratio of students to administrators and teachers, 2004–2019

This research paper Ballooning bureaucracy? Stylised facts of growing administration in Swedish higher education highlight how teachers are teaching more and the growing value of students-per-teacher. Compare it with the administrators managing fewer and the decreasing value of students-per-administrator. Teachers are fewer, managers are more numerous. How? Why?

Number of administrators in different categories, 2004–2019

Number of university employees in the group administration, by profession 2004–2019. Admin = Administration. Com = Communications. HR = Human Resources. IT = Information Technology. Note that the y-axes are shown on different scales to better display the variation. Teachers and researchers are flat. Secretaries (people who do work) are declining. Managers are increasing.

Time spent on administration not related to R&D

Percentage of total working hours in a week spent on "administration not directly related to research and development" during the period 2007–2009, averages and 95 percent confidence intervals. Data from UKÄ—the Swedish Higher Education Authority Secretaries' salaries are flat to declining, teachers' salaries are flat to declining, and managers' salaries shooting upward. Really? Really!

IT and HR staffing are declining. Management staffing is increasing and accelerating. This paper on the Swedish higher education system found teachers are teaching more and more students while administrators are managing fewer and fewer. The reason is teachers are fewer, managers are more. That makes no sense unless you understand that the university exists for the managers.

Professors now spend almost 20% of their workday on paperwork given to them by managers. This paperwork is not necessary; it's given to them to justify the jobs of the managers.

Top administrator salaries have ballooned over the past two decades, while faculty’s have decreased.

This is not fiscal austerity. The upward trajectory of administrator salaries does not reflect Gallaudet’s declining enrolment or an ongoing state of financial emergency. Data from AAUP showing professor salaries went from $72,000 to $86,000, a modest increase. The president's salary went from $141,000 to $280,000; it doubled. Administrators now make over three times as much as faculty.

At Yale, the president makes $2 million a year. At Westland, $3 million a year.

Then there's Stratford University, a private university that went bankrupt. The president, Richard Shurtz, listed himself and his wife as the biggest creditors, claiming the university owed them $2.5 million. Even as the university was collapsing, they paid out $30,000+ in stipends to trustees, had the university pay for their car leases, their mortgages. The filings for 2020 alone showed over $18,000 in lease and insurance payments for the Shurtzes' cars, over $4.7 million in loan payments and collateral returned to EagleBank on behalf of the Shurtzes.

How did they get away with it? Because in America, whoever can hire the best lawyers wins.

This is what's going to happen to many more universities around the world over the next five to ten years. From child care to universities, the public system is a complete rip-off. All you're doing is paying for the nice salaries and perks of administrators. You're not paying for the education of your child. You are paying for them to be brainwashed. You're paying for administrators to have nice lives.

So what would I do as a teenager today? Maybe not go to college or university. Focus on your personal education, on learning. Create your own student groups by reading a lot of books, by asking a lot of questions and doing your own research, by learning real skills. Talk with your parents about your decisions, because in a system where the game is rigged, going to university means you'll just lose. Is not like when your parents grew up. The world has changed.

Twenty or thirty years ago, it was good to go to university; you might become a manager. But now all those slots have been taken by the elite and their children. There's no space for you. The only thing you can do as a teenager is start educating yourself in real knowledge. Reading books. Meeting lots of different people. Exploring the world. Develop real knowledge.

II. Beyond the University: The Bureaucratization of EverythingII. Beyond the University: The Bureaucratization of Everything

It's not just universities. Every bureaucracy, every organisation is like this. Data show us how the population is modestly increasing while government employment balloons. Manufacturing jobs (blue) steeply decline from the 1980s onward as jobs move offshore. Government jobs (red) steadily increase. Workers: flat. Managers: steadily increasing.

The number of significant rules that impact daily life has actually gone down, but paperwork has gone up. How could that be possible? The managers produce nothing but meaningless paperwork. Another practical example? In the Civil War (1860s): 1 officer for every 14 soldiers. Today: 1 officer for every 4 soldiers. See below:

US Military: Number of 4-Star Generals, WWII vs. Today

World War II: America had about 12 million soldiers and 7 four-star generals. Today: America has about 1.2 million soldiers and 40 four-star generals. And guess what? The perks of a four-star general (this is from Raymond Dubois, who works at the Pentagon) include a personal G5 airplane. Costs $50 to $60 million per plane. Every four-star general has one. It's always waiting on the tarmac, even if he doesn't fly. Meanwhile, what's happened to soldiers? There are 1.2 million veterans on food stamps. 8% of all veterans in America. The people who actually fight, who actually make sacrifices, don't have enough to eat while generals fly around in luxury planes.

Across every department: people who do science, math, engineering: 621. People who do administration: 1,782. In every federal bureaucracy, you have bloat. It's a rigged game, because managers do the evaluations. At the end of the year, managers evaluate themselves and their friends as "outstanding". 62-64% of managers got "outstanding". For every other job, it's 47%.

Healthcare: Doctor Growth (Red) vs. Administrator Growth (Yellow)

Doctors: steady increase. Healthcare administrators: exploding upward. This forces healthcare costs up. The reason healthcare is so unaffordable in the United States is not because it has the best healthcare in the world. It doesn't. It's expensive because it has so many administrators who do nothing every day.

What do these managers do? They think of new ways to screw everyone else. What else do you think they do?

Health Insurance Claim Denial Rates

In this image, UnitedHealthcare denies about 32% of all claims. They do this as a practice. If you fight them, they'll say okay, we'll pay you. But if you don't fight them, they keep your money. Extremely unethical. That's what managers do every day.

This is not new, it has been going on for a long time, too long. For how long can it continue? For how long can we allow this to continue?

IV. Kafka and the Compliant TargetIV. Kafka and the Compliant Target

So why is America like this? Why is the West like this? Why is the entire world like this?

Franz Kafka was writing before World War I. His most famous book is The Trial.^[1] The main character, Joseph K., works at a bank. He's obedient, nice, never been in trouble. One day the police come and arrest him. They don't tell him why. He's put on trial. The judge doesn't tell him what he did wrong.

Joseph K. tries to figure out what's happening. His conclusion: the purpose of the court is to arrest innocent people and wage pointless prosecutions against them, which lead to no result. How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning?

Here's what Kafka doesn't say, but I will add: the police could arrest criminals. But they don't want to, because criminals might fight back. They'd rather arrest an innocent person because they know the person will be compliant. That's the logic of bureaucrats: how do I justify my existence by doing as little work as possible? That's how bureaucrats think. Always thinking of ways to justify their existence but not do real work.

V. The State Simplifies the WorldV. The State Simplifies the World

Hannah Arendt wrote about how Nazism came to dominate Germany and communism came to dominate Soviet Russia. In The Origins of Totalitarianism^[2], she said these regimes have three defining characteristics.

First, they're removed from reality. They don't care about reality; they have a faith, a mindset, and they want to impose their faith on reality.

Second, when you're removed from reality, your only logic is movement, expansion. You only know you're right if you're growing. The Nazis were losing the war, but their membership was increasing, so they thought they were right.

Third, they hate reality. They defy reality as a test of faith. Even when the Nazis were clearly losing the war, they doubled down.

What Arendt doesn't say in her book, but I will, is that these three characteristics apply to all bureaucracies, all governments, over time. All governments and all bureaucracies tend towards totalitarianism because that's the only way they can justify their existence.

James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State^[3] explains this concretely. For Scott, governments actually create more problems than they solve. He lists four reasons.

First: the administrative ordering of nature and society. A bureaucracy is a machine: it's static, mechanical, hierarchical. But society is like a forest: diverse, organic, an ecosystem. For a state to exist, it must turn the forest into a machine like itself. It destroys diversity. It destroys spontaneity. It destroys imagination.

You believe you're an individual with aspirations, ambitions, a past, a history. The state doesn't care. The state needs to classify you in a way that it can use you. You're a teenage boy, which means in two years you can work in a factory or I can send you to war. That's all I care about. I don't care about your name, your parents, your past, or what you like. I only care that you are a teenage boy, and therefore I can exploit you for labour.

Second: high-modernist ideology. Because the bureaucracy is a monopoly, it becomes arrogant. It has hubris. It wants to impose its ideology on everyone. It believes that through its own planning, it can achieve paradise. So it becomes authoritarian; it refuses to listen to criticism, to feedback, to questions. It imposes its will. This creates a weak civil society. If an organisation is not getting feedback, if it's not allowing openness, it will wither and die.

Scott's best example is the German forest in the late 19th century. Germany had lots of forests. The state thought: how can we best monetise this resource? The problem is that most of the forest is occupied by "useless" shrubs and greenery. So their bright idea: burn down the forest and just plant trees that can be harvested for lumber. Brilliant, more efficient, right?

The problem: those trees are now susceptible to disease and weather changes. A forest is resilient because it's diverse^[4]. Monocultures are more fragile. A diverse forest with many species of trees, birds, insects, mammals. It can withstand and recover from storms, disease, drought, severe cold. Some part of the forest can die, but the rest recovers.

Humans are the same way. If you let humans do what they want, we are resilient. Some communities might die off, but other communities adapt. The problem with the state is that it sees diversity as an enemy. So when a natural disaster hits, many more people die than otherwise.

Third: Scott argues that the state transforms society through forced collectivisation. In Tanzania, farmers had small farms growing diverse crops. The state said that's not efficient. Let's put all the farmers together and have them grow coffee. Then we can sell it. You can imagine what happened. When a weather crisis or disease hit, all the crops died and people starved.

Fourth: the state transforms organic communities into permanent cities. Before, people organised themselves bottom-up according to their needs. But the state can't tax you if you're on a small farm trading with neighbours. So the state brings you to cities, makes you work in a factory, gives you a wage so it can tax you. The point of giving you a wage is to exploit you.

VI. The Consequences: Fake Wealth, Quiet Quitting, Democratic DeclineVI. The Consequences: Fake Wealth, Quiet Quitting, Democratic Decline

What are the consequences of the over-bureaucratisation of society?

Consumer goods like cars, clothing, cell phones are getting cheaper. But what's going up in price? Hospital services, schooling, housing. Why? Because these are monopolies controlled by bureaucrats. With the over-bureaucratisation of society, it's almost impossible for middle-class people to have a good life.

Stock Market: Nominal Value vs. Gold-Adjusted Value

The stock market going up. You think: wow, this is great. But if you look at stocks priced in gold, if you use gold to buy stocks, the price has actually gone down. What this tells us is simple: we are living in a lie. All this wealth generation is not real. We just think it's real. We're living in a fairyland created by bureaucrats to fool us into believing we are prosperous. The amount of gold you can buy with stocks has gone down. Money is worthless.

Another consequence: people don't want to work anymore. In America it's called "quiet quitting". In China it's called Tang Ping (躺平), which means lying flat.^[5] People don't want to work because it's pointless to work in a bureaucracy. Leaders don't care. The organisation doesn't need you. You are alienated. You're told what to do and you cannot negotiate. You cannot rise. You're asked to work too much. You feel like a machine. So the way you rebel is lying flat, or quiet quitting.

The over-bureaucratisation of society means people have become more lazy, more complacent, and more indifferent. Democracy is declining because people's voices and power are declining.

A downward trending line showing that the capacity for people to participate in and influence politics has declined rapidly.

We are living in a world that is becoming more and more bureaucratic, and it is killing us.

VII. The Forest and the MachineVII. The Forest and the Machine

The core of the argument is this: a bureaucracy is a machine. It is static, hierarchical, mechanical. But society is not a machine; it's a forest. It's diverse, organic, spontaneous. For a bureaucracy to exist, it must destroy the forest and replace it with a plantation. The plantation looks efficient: all trees in neat rows, all producing the same output. But it's fragile. One disease and the whole thing collapses.

The same is true for human society. Communities need diversity. They need bottom-up organisation. They need the freedom to experiment, to fail, to adapt. Bureaucracy cannot tolerate any of this.

The university that once existed to help you grow into a thinking adult now exists to process you through a credential mill managed by administrators. The military that once existed to defend the country now exists to provide luxury perks for generals. The healthcare system that once existed to heal the sick now exists to generate billable denials for insurance companies. The government that once existed to serve the people now exists to produce paperwork that justifies its own existence.

Every institution follows the same cycle. First, struggle. You build something real. You serve a real need. You earn a reputation. Then, once the brand is secure, the struggle ends. The people in charge stop serving the mission and start serving themselves. They hire their friends. They create offices that protect other offices. They generate problems so they can sell solutions. They pick on compliant people because real work is hard.

And the institution dies not with a bang but with a memorandum.

The people in power will not give up. Society often has to collapse before it can regenerate, before it can rejuvenate. And before society collapses, they have many tricks. They can create civil wars where left and right fight each other, and they're left alone; they can use AI to control you, they can fake an alien invasion, and they can send you to pointless wars. Whatever it takes to maintain their privilege. That's how they think.

The only way out is to recognise what is happening. Authority has lost its glamour. You can no longer trust institutions to serve their stated purpose. You have to think for yourself. You have to educate yourself. You have to build real knowledge and real skills that no administrator can take from you.

The system does not want you to do this. The system wants you compliant, credentialled, indebted, and manageable. But if you can see the machine for what it is, you have already taken the first step outside it.

VIII. What can we do next?VIII. What can we do next?

So where does this leave us? The picture I have painted is bleak. Any modern institution and organisation are credential mills for administrators. The government produces paperwork instead of service. The military feeds generals while veterans starve. The healthcare system denies claims as a business model. The whole thing is rigged. A scam that does not look to have alternatives or ways out.

If you are waiting for the system to reform itself, you will be waiting a long time and you will continue to be a victim. The people in power will not give it up. They protect each other. They would rather bankrupt the whole society rather than lose their perks. And before the collapse, they had plenty of tricks, including civil conflict, AI control, fake alien invasions, and perhaps another moon landing? And as we have seen in the past years, pointless wars and other atrocities were made just for maintaining the game.

But here is the one good thing about living in a corrupt world: you can no longer trust authority. That sounds like a loss, but it is actually a gift, because we try to confuse autority with responsibility. When you could trust your teachers, your parents, your leaders, and your managers, you did not have to think for yourself. Now instead, you can see them for what they are. You are forced to think, to question, to explore different opinions. Your mind opens. That is the beginning of everything.

So what do you actually do?

First, stop treating credentials as salvation. University is a complete rip-off. Jobs are scams created to enslave you in the rat race. You are not paying for professors or education. You are not getting paid for the value you create. You are paying for administrators to have nice salaries and nice lives. Twenty years ago, a degree might have got you a management slot. A good middle-class job could pay for a house and sustain an entire family. Those slots are gone, mate! Taken by the elite and their children. There is no space for you in that game. The major does not matter. Your state or nation's president does not matter. They are all puppets. It is all the same system feeding off the same host.

Second, educate yourself in real knowledge. Read books. Ask questions. Do your own research. Learn real practical skills. Meet lots of different people. Explore the world. The system does not want you to do this. The system wants you compliant, indebted, and manageable. But real practical knowledge is the one thing no administrator or dictator can take from you.

Third, find the people who are also awake. The corruption is so widespread that it forces people to wake up. You are not alone. Find the ones who are also thinking for themselves, also questioning, also building real skills outside the credential machine. That is where the real education happens.

Fourth, do not wait for permission. The institution will never tell you it is okay to bypass it. Do it anyway. Learn to code, to write, to build, to fix, to create — without asking a dean or a manager for approval. The bureaucratic world hates this because it cannot classify you. Be unclassifiable.

The cycle is what it is. Every institution follows the same arc: struggle, success, brand, rent-seeking, death. You cannot stop the cycle by working within it. But you can step outside it. You can stop feeding the parasites. You can build something real with people who also refuse to be judged and processed.

The machine wants you to believe there is no alternative. There is. It is harder, it pays less on paper, and it comes with no credentials. But it provides you and your community much more value, and more importantly, it is yours. And that is the whole point. Be responsible for yourself and for the people you love around you.

X. FootnotesX. Footnotes

1. Franz Kafka, The Trial (Der Prozess), written 1914–1915, published posthumously 1925. The novel follows Joseph K., who is arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible court, with the nature of his crime never revealed. Kafka died in 1924; his friend Max Brod published the manuscript against Kafka's stated wish that it be destroyed. ↩

2. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951). Arendt's analysis focuses on Nazism and Stalinism as novel forms of government characterised by ideology, terror, and the systematic destruction of the public realm. The three characteristics referenced are developed in Part Three, "Totalitarianism". ↩

3. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). Scott's four mechanisms of state simplification: administrative ordering of nature and society, high-modernist ideology, authoritarian imposition, and the destruction of local knowledge (metis). ↩

4. Scott, Seeing Like a State, Chapter 1, "Nature and Space." The German forest example comes from the work of forest scientist Heinrich Cotta and the transition from diverse polyculture forests to monoculture "scientific forestry" in 19th-century Prussia. Scott's exact phrasing: "Monocultures are as a rule more fragile and hence more vulnerable to the stress of disease and weather than polycultures are." ↩

5. Tang Ping (躺平, "lying flat") is a Chinese social phenomenon that emerged around 2021, where young people reject the pressures of the 996 work culture (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) by minimising ambition, consumption, and participation in the rat race. "Quiet quitting" is the American equivalent that gained prominence around 2022. ↩