To: Little Joe who wrote (133690 ) 10/9/2008 8:24:40 AM From: E. Charters Respond to Another way of saying this, is, bigness causes inefficiency and functional corruption. Reasons are layers of corpulent indolence and theft, mazes of regulations, confusion of purpose, excess taxation to support the bureaucrats, bad decision making, and, ~shudder~, etcetera . It is the effect of the shearing and shredding etcetera that is the tipster.time spent by committees is inversely proportionate to the degree importance of the issue. Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly scientific observations supporting his law, such as the increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Great Britain's overseas empire declined (indeed, he shows that the Colonial Office had its greatest number of staff at the point when it was folded into the Foreign Office because of a lack of colonies to administer). He explains this growth by two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He notes in particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done."
